


The Beauty of Defiance

by Suchthingbutnever



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Adultery, Affairs, Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Married Life, Slash, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 04:26:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 51,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suchthingbutnever/pseuds/Suchthingbutnever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two married couples, two different dynamics that are bound to self-implode - Zayn and Liam meet on the edge of their respective wife's success and do not hesitate to fall. What follows is a hard crash, paired with the resulting sparks. Ziam/ Married!Men/ Affair/ AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Liam marches straight out (in his head)

**Author's Note:**

> I've been posting this story at my tumblr for over a year now, and decided that I should move it to this much more accessible platform here. I'd very much appreciate comments and suggestions - the writing is still ongoing. 
> 
> I'll quote myself to make the description simple:  
> “It’s basically about both Zayn and Liam being married to extremely succesful women and struggling to come to terms with their marriage, their supposed ‘inferiority’ and their mutual attraction. I gave the name some thought and came to the conclusion that ‘the beauty of defiance’ is just right, and will perhaps strike more interest?”

It was the end of the speech that Liam dreaded.

 

The elegant out-door venue was packed, sharp edges of tailored suits sticking out against the tightened curves of cock tail dresses. Waiters stood against the far wall, uniforms a piercing sort of white, eyes distant, staring off into the silky blue night sky, gloved hands holding bottles of champagne to refill belligerently.

 

All eyes were on her. Her dark costume complementing, red lipstick worn for the occasion almost a neon warning sign, an attraction, the focus of the evening. She had thanked all the senior partners, the sponsors, chief executives, her colleagues, who were really her employees, and then her secretary for reorganizing her schedule every five to ten minutes – the last of which earned her a collective chuckle.

 

Liam glanced around himself, his tie somehow tighter than before.

 

“And last but absolutely not least,” Danielle brought up her other hand to support the microphone, smile growing soft demonstratively, “My dear husband, who has supported me all these years.”

Liam fought the intense urge to look down while seemingly a thousand alert, talebearing eyes turned on him, the ones who were within the picture smiling indulgingly, waiting to spill the beans to those who weren’t. Instead, he kept his chin upright and smiled a practiced, warm beam.

Danielle placed a hand on her chest, covering the sparkling new jewelry they had only gone and bought the other day. With her money. “Never mention all the coffee mugs he rinses at the end of the fiscal year.”

 

Now a few louder barks of laughter were heard. Liam chuckled along, fingers tightly interwoven underneath the crème-colored table cloth. An elderly couple seated just one table away were looking at him rather shamelessly – his ridiculously old-fashioned three-piece suit stretching across his protruding abdomen, her dress a screaming shade of violet, with matching hair-decoration and eye shadow applied.

Liam let the last few sentences of Danielle’s address pass him by and then joined in with the enthusiastic applause, eyes fixed somewhere to the left of the podium, on a heart-shaped rosebush or something equally unnerving.

 

The director of the co-venturing business now stood, announcing with a slight but gracious bow to Danielle that everyone should now go along and enjoy the night. Chattering returned while Liam took his spoon and scooped up the last of his Italian pudding or whatnot. He could never remember the name of these dishes.

 

“God, that took me long.” Danielle was back, hand gently placed on the small of his back, leaning in for a quick peck on the cheek. “Ted’s cancelled, trip down to Nantes, family business. And we’ve been planning for ages!”

Liam gave a hum of approval as the waiters moved to collect the half-eaten or mostly untouched plates. He knew what the rest of the evening would be like. Socializing – him among the other men, big Cuban cigars and expensive cognac, semi-modest talk about yachts and children overseas, research programs and outsourcing. Danielle would be skipping from one important guest to the other, bursting charming laughter every now and then, moving her hands in that decided fashion she sported among business partners. She’d introduce him if he happened to be nearby, but really, Liam hoped not.

 

He hadn’t volunteered to be here.

 

Except he really had. Danielle had asked him thrice over whether he’d rather stay in. but Liam knew this was big for her, even if most of the economic terms flew by, as always. Her being the managing director, and all that. 

 

She turned towards her General Manager, or something along those lines, and started up a quick discussion on something or other. Even on the night of her victory she couldn’t leave the work be. Liam sighed and carried on sipping his orange soda, eyes trailing along the tops of the red-wine glasses, some stained, some not. He had work in the morning – Niall had asked him to come in early tomorrow, him being home for the weekend, on much happier gatherings than this one.

 

From the left he heard a lowered voice, still screeching high, with a scandalous tone which he’d come to recognize over the years: “… a construction worker, I’ve heard… blue collar family background, you see…” Without fail, it was the violet lady who’d been ogling him before, talking to a meticulously groomed woman who wasn’t even nodding along, glass in hand, maroon lips pursed. Next to her sat a younger man, who, much to Liam’s surprise, was doodling on a thick napkin.

 

“… to introduce you to the Rogans.” His attention snapped back to his wife, giving a quick nod of agreement and rising to his feet to shake another few hands. He absently noted the queer looks he received when a title wasn’t added next to his name. Jennifer was the editor of some magazine he’d never heard of and whose name gave him very little to guess on, her brand-new husband was another Executive somewhere.

 

Liam smiled and answered the mock casual question about some football match from the husband, before the questions about his career inevitably rolled in. 

 

He had met Danielle the year he decided to leave Uni and his engineering degree be and went to get himself a spot in a factory where he could appreciate actual craftsmanship, get some hands-on experience.

He’d run straight into Niall and then decided that this was the exact sort of environment he wanted to work in. The degree was taken on and finished under Danielle’s urging, but Liam never once thought about leaving the lads he had grown so fond of or his job that he actually genuinely enjoyed.

 

Danielle had gone into business and economics, starting off at the reception counter, working herself up. It came down to him coming home from work, scrubbing the engine oil from his palm, while she sprayed herself with some Eau d’whatnot, heading off to dinner with a client.

 

“God, that’s quite extraordinary. And you’ve never thought of actually putting that fine degree to use?” The Rogan woman nodded in false approval, while casting her husband a side-glance.

“I like my job.” Liam said, and only remembered to smile when Danielle slid her hand subtly into his suit-jacket. “It’s very… practical.”

“I see.” The couple both nodded, like he had just spoken of a hidden universal truth. The look in their eyes seemed mocking. Thankfully, Danielle took over the conversation from there and promised to introduce them to the Edwards, whoever that was.

 

Liam excused himself and walked off towards the men’s loo.

 

He just felt like being alone for a moment. To be honest, he very much felt like loosening his tie and walking straight off, all the way down the hill and home. When Danielle and him had first moved together, they’d rented a little flat at the outskirts of town. Liam had adored it. Adored the nearby forest, the gardens, the playing children.

They moved out of it the moment Danielle had received her first paycheck as head of finance. Now home was the penthouse she had picked out with the famous Italian downstairs and a Bio food store down the street.

 

Liam splashed his face with the icy water, and looked into the mirror sullenly. He was thirty-one years old. He had been married for more than a sixth of his life. He lived in comfort, if not to say splendor. His wife was beautiful and successful and headstrong and… he loved her. Despite everything.

 

“Zayn, for God’s sake –“ 

 

Liam jerked out of his trance and proceeded to wipe his hands on his trousers, until straightening up, trying his best to regain posture. A woman stood in the door, lip-lined mouth pulled into a severe line, polished nail ticking against the wooden frame. “Excuse me.” She said without really looking at Liam, marching straight in and knocking on one of the posh cabin doors.

 

Liam couldn’t help but gawk at the ridicule of it all, he took a step back and got himself a grip on the sink when the door opened and the woman pulled out a young man with a rather brute force.

“I told you we were meeting the Rogans.” She hissed, blonde bun tight on the top of her shiny, groomed head. “Don’t bother pretending you even listened.”

The young man just duck his head and proceeded towards the door. On his earlobe was a rather expensive looking diamond stud, Liam acknowledged. He also registered that the sharp curve of his nose made him almost stereotypically dark and handsome, clear for anyone, even just in passing.

 

With a shake of his head, Liam grabbed a thick towel to dry his hands properly and headed out, making his way through the crowd to find Danielle. To his immediate regret she was still talking animatedly to the Rogan couple, and now joining them were – for heaven’s sake. It was the blonde woman and Mr. Dark.

 

“Oh God, yes. Perrie, so good of you to come, thank you.” They exchanged kisses on the cheeks, with Danielle smiling maybe a tad too excitedly and the blonde woman raising barely the corners of her red mouth. “Jennifer and Brody, I’m sure you’ve heard. Yes, too kind.”

Hands were shaken, more smiles and hugs were exchanged. “And this is my husband, Liam. Liam, Perrie Edwards and her husband, Zack.”

An awkward silence ensued, in which Perrie looked somewhat amused and Liam fought the urge to tell his wife about her mistake. Then: “It’s alright. But it’s – it’s Zayn.”

 

Liam laughed to take the edge off Danielle’s flustered apologies. “It’s the heat, darling. You’ve been working and organizing all day long.”

“Yes, yes, that must be… do we want a punch? This particular catering service sounded rather promising.”

The Rogans immediately agreed, while Perrie took the lead like she had been the one to make the suggestion.

 

Liam didn’t even bother following. There were to be more business talk and small talk and business talk – he wouldn’t be missed. His eyes followed Danielle’s curls and the tight blonde bun until they were lost in the crowd. A quartette had started playing some time ago, and Liam longingly thought of a nice, chilled beer.

Then his eyes skipped back to find that the husband with the wrong name, Zayn, was still standing next to him

 

“Oh, hello.” Liam cleared his throat while once again acknowledging the intensity of the lad’s dark beauty. “I – I’m Liam. But you already knew that.”

“Yeah.” Zayn turned to glance at him. “I guess.” His eyes came to rest on the carpeted, dark red floor.

“So, posh place, huh?” Liam almost bit his tongue after he let that slip. Of course it was posh, for God’s sake. Danielle was the one holding the whole thing. To his surprise, Zayn chuckled, almost under his breath.

“The Lobster had gold folio on it.”

Liam couldn’t help but grin a little himself. He’d seen the thing too, large and red and overly-decorated at the center of their table. “Adds to the taste.”

“Rip it off and keep it, y’know.”

 

To Liam’s surprise, Zayn sounded northern. In a rather unguarded way.

In the last three years since Danielle had skyrocketed up the corporate ladder, he had met quite a few people who spoke such accurate, punctured English that he couldn’t have guessed their origin at all, had Danielle not told him they were Welsh, Scouse or some such.

He decided that he liked this bit of local patriotism, this bit of self-preservation.

 

“So, you’re not going to ask which Chief Executive I am?”

Zayn shrugged. “I already heard them talking.” 

“Oh.” Liam glanced to see whether Zayn really didn’t care. He sure sounded like it. “What is it you do, then?”

“Nothing much.” Zayn shrugged. “I model. Modeled. Somethin’ like that.”

 

That actually made sense to Liam. He nodded, while noticing Danielle waving to him in the crowd, the gentleman in the three-piece suit and the Violet Lady standing next to her, looking decidedly undignified.

“Uh, I guess I have to… I’ll see you, I guess?” He didn’t bother using pretty words. “See ya, mate.”

Zayn nodded, while heading the other way, the nape of his neck an elegant stretch that would’ve looked dead right on any editorial picture.

 

It didn’t occur to Liam what it meant until a few hours and horrifying introductions later. He stood by the desert table, eating a glazed banana, when the little word ‘trophy husband’ caught his attention and when he turned to find the vicious whispering voice, his eyes caught Zayn at the other end of the room, holding a glass of wine while standing next to Perrie.

 

The face he put on to shake all the hands was uncannily familiar.


	2. Sex

There were perhaps a few things Zayn knew for sure he was good at.

 

One of them he discovered fairly early on in life: rolling spliffs. His clique of friends back home would cluster together after dreary, grey days of school and take turns breathing in and out, smoke twirling between them. Zayn would be the one to inconspicuously place the right amount and run his tongue along the yellowing edges of the skin. Later on in his life he discovered that he was also good at doing other drugs, harder ones, while looking perfectly normal save for his blown-out pupils.

He knew he could draw fairly well, but his confidence didn’t let on enough to have him actually think that he was genuinely good at it.

 

Also, he was really good at sex.

 

The first girl who told him so was Maria Donaldson at fifteen, in an almost surprised sort of tone, hushing him while they tried to straighten up in the back of her closet, with her mum bustling outside. As the years progressed, the compliments dwindled for the lack of communication during the heated moment. Most didn’t stay long enough to exchange two proper sentences. Zayn himself hurried to leave, tried not to make a thing out of nothing.

Except maybe with Harry, who he had met at university and became friends with. Harry was never shy to compliment a person. Or Becca. Zayn had needed an actual four months until she had moved away with her daughter to realize that he’d just had a six-month relationship.

 

Then there was Perrie.

 

“That was good.” She was smoothing back her hair, checking her nails in a routine sort of way. “After that fiasco of a company dinner.”

She mostly became talkative after sex, something Zayn used to be grateful for. Now he just sighed inwardly and waited for her sharp words to roll over him.

“Honestly, that Payne woman hasn’t a clue of anything. Thinks she’s on top.”

Zayn gave a noncommittal grunt and reached to the bedside table for his pack of cigarettes. “Just look at her pathetic excuse of a husband. Can’t even marry a man who she can look at level-eye.”

Zayn stopped his fiddling with the lighter and turned his head towards Perrie, gauging her expression. If there was ever talk of an unequal marriage…

 

“Oh, stop it, please. You’re a model. For Elite.”

 

“Yeah, sure.”

 

They fell into silence and Perrie rolled over, blonde hair fanning out on the pillow softly. She looked up at Zayn and for a moment he could feel the buzzing in the air. They had met at some charity dinner, with her as the organizer and him fresh on the cover of Vogue, sporting jeans and a tired, lazy look. Also his hands twitched the whole night from the itch in his nose and the white layer of powder on his new stainless steel kitchen table.

 

Perrie had always been an appreciator of beautiful things. Within the business she was the unspoken man-eater, even if she was far too dedicated to work to even acknowledge that half the walls of her apartment were empty and the supposed beauty was all packed away in boxes, sealed.

 

“I thought he was fine.”

 

“Who? Payne’s husband? Oh please.”

 

She sat up and reached to take a cigarette from Zayn’s box, while leaning over her breasts pressed against his stomach. Two years ago that would’ve resulted in them going straight back to shagging, now the slick coldness of her skin just made Zayn cringe away.

 

Of course they immediately went for it on the charity event. Right after Perrie’s speech of thanks they had gone to a tasteful room just two floor up and didn’t bother holding back even a bit. Zayn remembers feeling weirdly numb, and Perrie moaning in tandem to the knocking sound the table made against the wall.

Three months later they met again, with Zayn walking down the runway in a daze and Perrie sitting next to the designers and journalists, eyeing him in critique before taking him to her hotel in central Paris and riding him like she wanted it bad. Which she probably did.

 

“Anyway, I’m going to have some coffee now.”

 

And there she went, draping a bath robe over her naked, slim frame. She had kept herself in good shape by using anti-aging products and eating one meal of salad a day. But the difference was there, the gap of eight years that hung between them.

Zayn sunk into the pillows and blew the smoke against the silhouettes of the darkening sky outside. On the wall opposite to their bed was a tastefully canvased photograph of himself, draped in a coat and wearing nothing but designer underwear beneath, running down the streets of Rome. Or was it Venice? Perrie had liked it, the lightning, the bleak black-and-white coloring, his frenzied expression still languid, left hand just merely touching the Italian street lamp.

 

It was probably the last picture of him featured in a recognized fashion magazine.

 

Afterwards there was a blur of colors and alcohol and drugs, things Zayn was good at. He had never been good at taking editorial pictures or walking down some runway. People were just too preoccupied with his jawline to realize that he had no talent at all, wasn’t fascinating or amazing or blessed with a great personality, whatever that meant.

 

He’d tried desperately for a comeback, for a reason he couldn’t fathom. Probably to not live up to the big cliché of fame.

Along with his tries to get back in front of some camera, any camera, he ran into Perrie, by now chief executive and determined to prove the world, who thought she was a cold-blooded career bitch, wrong.

In an act of desperation they went to some posh movie theatre and watched some bad Thriller which Perrie somewhat enjoyed but haunted Zayn for most of the nights of the coming month. Along with his rehab settling in, he was mostly grateful that he could fall asleep in her bed.

 

In the living room Perrie had turned on the TV but left it muted, which meant that she had her laptop on and was probably checking mails or some such. Zayn got up and took his cigarette along, smoking all the way to his room. It was actually the guest’s room, but since they rarely had guests at all, he’d personalized it into his little corner within this big house.

There he sat down on the couch and smoked up, watching the last whiffs of smoke disappear into thin air. At least that was one thing they had in common: their perpetual smoking habit.

 

But even now she used another lighter.

 

A year and a half ago, he slept with a former colleague. A black, eccentric looking model who he had been on set with for Burberry, and who was considered the next Naomi Campbell. In an attempt to reconnect with his days of flash-light, of diet coke and Calvin Klein socks, he’d fucked her into some mattress of some luxurious hotel in London, with her telling him that she really liked his accent, and that he should keep it. Like the Gallaghers.

Of course it didn’t bring him back into the business, and he couldn’t have lost his northern twang if he scraped a knife over his tongue.

 

Of course Perrie had found out, and in her wounded pride, and perhaps even her hurt feelings, she went and slept with someone. Zayn never bothered finding out whom.

It continued on, with them both sleeping with other people, in revenge, perhaps. And in Zayn’s case it was an act of self-destruction, or so he thought in hindsight. He wanted to prove to himself that he was, indeed, a fuck-up. After a few months they both stopped, but it went unspoken that cheating wasn’t cheating anymore, not really.

 

The Paynes surely weren’t such a mess, Zayn thought to himself, nonsensically, while pulling open the window and lighting another cigarette. Liam, that bloke, had looked at him and smiled so genuinely. Like he was happy to be there, at that laughably extravagant venue, hold his wife’s hand and let people sneer at him behind his back, or sometimes even openly.

Of course Zayn had heard them talk. About Liam’s job, like it was something adorable and childish, not to be taken seriously. Fixing engines. Building engines – Lord, how laughable. Zayn could remember his cousin up in Bradford going into the business, coming home streaked and dirty, hands growing rough every day. “It’s honest work, Zayn.” His mum had told him while he came in through the narrow door, entering their narrow, brown house, ready to sit down for a dinner of seven.

 

And Liam probably loved her. The executive director.

 

His love for her shielded him from everything.

 

Zayn gave a deep sigh and squeezed out his smoke. There had been talk of another annual charity dinner, exactly the one he and Perrie had met on. Only this time her rank had risen so much she wasn’t even near the organizing committee anymore. She was probably an honored guest, along with her husband.

 

That is, if Zayn was to come.

 

Who the fuck was he kidding? Of course Perrie would make him go. Didn’t marry him for nothing. At first Zayn had been angry at the whispers, stating that he was merely a boy-toy, someone for Perrie to pass her time with. Then he stopped caring in general.

The facts were clear. He was an unemployed model who hadn’t been home for Christmas for three years straight (It would’ve meant taking her, and her seeing that tiny little room of his that Wahliya had probably taken over by now). She was leading an international corporation, fierce and rising, living the new feminism.

 

She had even put her surname behind Zayn’s, but he’d been much too happy to be clean of all the things he was good at, including the constant sex with strangers, which he allowed to happen randomly at his last few stages of desperation. Sex with Perrie was simple, it was like reading a school book.

 

Well, at first, that was.

 

“Are you coming to bed any soon?”

 

Zayn didn’t even realize how long he had just stood in the cold night air, breathing in. Perrie didn’t hesitate a second, and when her arms snaked around his torso he knew that she had had wine. Three glasses at least. Quite contrary to her image, she couldn’t hold her alcohol at all.

She licked the skin behind his ear and whispered. “Let’s pretend we’re Danielle Payne and her husband.”

“What, act in love?” Zayn couldn’t help but let out a snort. That Danielle woman sure had made it to the top – otherwise Perrie wouldn’t have even bothered mentioning her name.

“No, you fuck me like I’m made of porcelain.”

 

They both grinned at that, Zayn could feel her smile pressing into his shoulder.

 

Then he thought of those earnest brown eyes, the crinkles that came along with his smile, and all he could think was that there was nothing further away from Liam than him. But Perrie was already tugging him towards the couch, slipping out of her bathrobe and sliding her hand into Zayn’s shorts.

 

When he pushed into her gently, he tried to picture Liam’s expression in the men’s loo.

 

For authenticity.


	3. In which Liam's stomach settles low

Driving gave Liam a sort of settled calmness.

 

He liked the soft hum of the engine, the scenery flying by, the steady grip of his hands on the steering wheel.

His day had been good. The geezer had ordered him into his office and poured them both cheap coffee to announce his promotion. It wasn’t of any financial meaning, compared to what Danielle made every hour, the sum was laughable, really. But Liam had felt appreciated when everyone clapped him on the back for congratulations. Now he had a number of administrative tasks added to his daily shift, but as Eddie said, he was intellectual one of the bunch, he should be doing it anyway.

 

“Jus’ sorry ‘bout yar wifey, aren’t I? Found meself a nice lass to marry, she sews and minds the stove, nuffin’ fancy.” He’d said, placing a sympathetic hand on Liam’s back. “Shoulda met my sister back in the day’s, she would’ve been a right fit for ya.”

“Ta, Eds, but I’m fine, really.”

 

The lads Liam worked with were all faithful within their belief of a nice, subdued life with a woman who would scream you down every now and then, beer and chips, mates and the football. Liam had once invited them over after work, saying that he’d met all their families and been to their respective homes, but he hadn’t had the chance to host anything yet.

It ended with Danielle coming in early and wondering out loud why they would need to send six men for the plumbing. In the end, it was Niall’s loud laughter and carefree “Sorry, love, that’s the smell of me.”, that broke the icy silence that took over the entire apartment.

 

Liam had been explaining for half his life now why he chose to work where worked, and now he had to explain to the people he worked with why he had married the woman he had married. It just all didn’t fit together.

The sleek designer lamps and contemporary art pieces and Liam’s stained working pants. It was so completely out of the ranks of social norms, in a bewildering way that Liam sometimes wondered whether he was very normal after all.

 

But he loved Danielle, and he liked working with the lads.

 

He didn’t really mind her earning five times as much as he did, and most of the time he could convince himself that he didn’t care about what those colleagues and clients of hers thought.

 

Speaking of which.

 

He turned left, uphill, the slope immediately palpable. The houses around him grew bigger and wider apart, the gardens a strange, blurry assertion of geometrical forms in dark greens. He saw a gathering by candlelight on a patio, bottles of wine lounging in ice buckets. At the very top of the hill was the big, modernized mansion Danielle had told him about all day long, where they were holding that charity event.

 

It was a Thursday and Danielle had told him to come fetch her at half past eleven, so she could at least catch a few hours of sleep before that awfully important meeting of hers in the morning. Apparently everything in the business world clashed, date-wise.

He could already hear the faint buzz of a talking crowd, with soft, modern music playing in the background. Liam came to a halt a few paces back of the grand gateway.

 

People were heading in and out. These sort of parties were always a good opportunity to mesh with semi-famous artists who were eager to present their work, with models and starlets, the first perhaps a little less willing than the second, with writers and supposed intellectuals.

Liam walked in, eyes scanning the scatter of tuxedoed, fancily dressed pairs leaning together, talking, swaying, sipping whatever it was from their crystal clear glasses. Liam ignored the looks that were thrown his way – he was dressed in jeans and T-shirt, old trainers soft on his feet.

 

The place was huge.

 

Large French-style Windows were installed everywhere, torches illuminating only restricted areas, giving the whole venue a decidedly romantic touch. Liam took a quick look at the main entrance and then shrugged and went to head around the house – confrontation really wasn’t his thing.

The darkness took him in quickly, the only light source coming from the bright ballroom, glowing through the window planes. Was there no side door here at all? Could he not sneak in through the kitchen and tuck Danielle out by the wrist?

 

Halfway through the rose bushes Liam heard a faint rustling noise and quickly turned away for his own sake. He knew that these posh elitists weren’t any better than a hoard of College kids, given the alcohol and the right amount of attractiveness. He didn’t want to know who was doing whom, or who had split up, no. He just… wanted to get Danielle and drive home.

 

But then his eyes flicked through the dark in a desperate attempt to find a way into the building, and he recognized with growing dread a shock of blonde hair, a sleek bun, between the hedge of roses and the far brick wall. Perrie, he thought, immobile. That woman from Danielle’s dinner party. Now he even recognized her sharp elbows and the slim line of her waist.

 

Her tight dress was zipped open all the way up to her thigh.

 

Liam closed his eyes and turned away, trying to stumble his way back to his car. He would just wait there until Danielle turned up, probably giggly and tipsy from all the Champagne.

So, the pair of them, the Edwards. God, who knew they were still so passionately in love? Acting like teenagers with her already in her mid-thirties or so. Perhaps older?

 

But then again, who wouldn’t be passionate about Zayn.

 

It wasn’t until Liam had stumbled into someone that he stopped walking and looked up to find himself back in the bright entrance area. He took in a deep breath and inhaled a mouthful of cold smoke, choking and coughing.

 

“Alright?”

 

Liam stood there, paralyzed. He had run straight into Zayn. And if Zayn was here, then he sure as hell wasn’t shagging in the bushes. Which meant that it had to be someone else. And that would be cheating. Breaking the vow. Committing adultery.

 

“Well, you look fancy.”

 

Liam gazed up at Zayn, took in his sleek fit of a suit and the messy knot of his cravat, the way his sleeves were rolled up. He made the scenery of the old mansion into a classy advertisement just by standing there. Anyone, including Liam, would want to rent it now.

 

“I, uh. Hello. Yeah, tough choice, huh?” Liam laughed, and he could hear the nervous edge in the ring of his voice. I just saw your wife in the rose gardens. Maybe she was just having a friendly chat. “Where’s… where’s Perrie? Is she… well?”

“Dunno. Couldn’t find her.”

Liam felt a huge pressure on his stomach, like it was forced to drop. What was he supposed to do now? Tell him? Keep him away from the gardens? But most of all he wondered why in the world a person would cheat when they were married to someone as stunning as Zayn.

“That’s… uh. Well, I was looking for Danielle? To pick her up?”

 

For a second he felt a sense of irritation rising in his chest. Why couldn’t she just have called a taxi? Why did she want him to show up everywhere? He sure as hell wasn’t going to make friends with her posh clients any day soon.

Then the feeling was gone and what left was endless pity for Zayn, who was standing around on his own, gracelessly smoking with a dejected hunch to his shoulders, looking like the epitome of tragic beauty. God, Liam just couldn’t. He couldn’t tell him. That would be too cruel. And God knows whether Zayn would just stomp out and attempt to choke the man who dared to touch his wife – Liam knew he himself was sure to react somewhere along those lines if Danielle was to… well, she wouldn’t. Not ever.

 

“I don’t know, mate. Not sure I’ve seen her at all.”

 

“Well,” Liam hesitated. He really hated the thought of just walking in in his state of dress. “I’m overdressed, as you can see.”

Zayn gave a low chuckle, throwing down his cigarette and putting it out with a quick twist of his foot. His eyes were obscured but Liam could feel them tracing his face, and it made him uneasy. “You want me to go fetch her, or somethin’?”

“That would be… really great.”

 

He watched as Zayn walked back in, his figure attracting attention, causing awe and whispers, probably not all of the nice kind. Liam sucked in a deep breath, looking down onto the pebbled driveway. He hated to withhold the information from Zayn, but somehow it wasn’t any of his business, was it? Then again, the pressing feeling in his stomach, it wasn’t enjoyable to the least.

 

“Honey, sorry I took so long. The line at the lady’s room was way beyond.”

 

Liam just nodded absentmindedly, eyes darting back and forth to find Zayn. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

 

On the drive home Liam focused on the road, sliding downhill easily, while Danielle chatted along, speaking of people who Liam didn’t know or forgot about. He didn’t care, to be honest, and in this very moment he couldn’t bring himself to act like he cared, either.

 

“What…” he suddenly said, halfway across town, “What is Mrs. Edwards like?”

 

Danielle stopped her ranting and blinked at him from the side. Liam didn’t take his eyes off the road, though, fists tight around the steering wheel. The streets rushed by and lights fuzzed together in a haze.

“Perrie? Well, I’ve only been working with her for a few months, but… she’s very headstrong, I suppose. Severe on herself and everyone else.” She paused for a second, brows furrowing while watching Liam’s profile. “Why are you asking?”

“I met her husband outside, is all.”

“Oh, yes. Husband.”

 

Liam turned his head, catching the lingering remains of her distasteful expression. It shocked him a little, to see Danielle, his Danielle, who had stayed somewhat sweet and homebound through all of her career struggles, pull such a cruel face.

 

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Well, he’s a model, to start with.” Danielle pursed her lips while Liam took the last bend towards the building they lived in. He parked and killed the engine, never looking away from his wife. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Heavens, Li, you can’t be that daft. Why do models marry wealthy?”

“That’s very generalizing, you know.”

“God, why are we talking about this?”

“You tell me.”

 

Silence settled in while Liam’s stomach churned uncomfortably. He hated fighting, even semi-arguing with Danielle. They were so tuned to harmony.

“Liam, it’s just… well. She likes men, obviously. And he hasn’t been modeling for a while now.”

“Why is that any of our business? You don’t like it when people talk about me like that, do you?”

“It’s not, I never said it was. And you’re different. I’ve known you since before all of that.”

“Well, maybe they know each other from way back, too.”

 

Liam didn’t know why he kept opening his mouth. He usually just let Danielle get it all out and then they could talk nice and calm again, like normal people. Or perhaps unlike normal people.

But something about the way Danielle’s eyes had sharpened in a mean glaze, the way she spoke about Zayn just made him angry. Because Perrie was in the rose bushes fucking some other chap, and because Zayn was gorgeous and alone in a corner, a sight that just made something inside him turn. But also because he recognized the look she had worn from all the other people who were too busy judging him to notice that he was staring right back.

 

“I’ll go to bed now.”

 

When Liam looked up for a second time, Danielle was already disappearing into their building. He hurried to catch the elevator and then decided to walk the eight floors, breathing flat and calm, feeling the contractions of his muscles.

 

Then he thought of the way Zayn had held the glimmering light of the cigarette between his lips and the guilt burned low in his abdomen. Perhaps he was feeling all the shame for Perrie, and then he was feeling sad because Danielle didn’t like Zayn merely for he was a model.

 

There were facets of her he didn’t know, after all.


	4. Pints

It took Zayn exactly two weeks to find out about Perrie’s affair with Brody Rogan.

 

He might have found out earlier, but since Rogan still had to keep a clean shirt on his wife’s front, they were sneakier than Perrie would’ve usually been. He came home early from a shopping trip, restocking his closet with clothes that he deemed suitable for someone post-modeling, but still with a bit of high-fashion edge.

 

He ended up buying five or six identical black generic T-shirts.

 

In the days before he left home, walked runways and snorted coke, Zayn had had a youthful, almost athletic sort of glow, even if he’d never been truly a sporty type. Now when he looked into the mirror he saw a sunken version of his younger self, and he couldn’t bring himself to buy the colorful, tight fitting pants he would’ve worn nine years back.

In his worst days, where he could barely squint in the flashing light, the creative directors had hired him for shoots where they wanted the dark circles, the vulnerability, the skinny curve of his hips.

 

Now he was something in between those things, floating, frowning at nothing and doing basically nothing about anything.

 

That was how he walked in on Perrie and Brody Rogan making out heavily in their hallway, clothes already discarded. The panicked shout Rogan gave almost made Zayn smile, while Perrie just stood there with her manicured hands on her bare hips, eyes hostile.

 

“Don’t mind me.” Zayn waved them away and headed to his room, and a few minutes later he heard the door to their bedroom snap shut with a curt force he knew only Perrie possessed.

Two and a half hours later he realized, while painting the glister upon a flat wave, green and white and strangely enough, purple within the sea – he realized with all force that he couldn’t have gotten any more pathetic. Married a woman who didn’t take him seriously. Chronically unemployed for two years now. And now the sounds of their lovemaking melted into the wall while Zayn painted central European scenery and marveled over the color of water.

 

Then after a few moments in which the paint on his little plate dried into clumps, he shrugged and went back to his art.

 

He probably didn’t deserve any better.

 

That’s also what Harry told him when they went out in the evening, both in battered leather jackets, both too tired with the day to bother speaking in proper sentences.

So Harry was his mate from university. They had fit together like puzzle pieces, right from the start – both studying subjects deemed useless to practical life, both not uninterested in the delicious rubbing of stubble against their groin while receiving a blowjob, both too off their head trying to idealize while not really having an ideal at all.

 

Then Zayn went off modeling and sipping Champagne, and naturally, he forgot about Harry. Forgetting was really the nicest of things, back in those days.

 

They met again, three months after Zayn’s big crash, two weeks after his shotgun wedding in Las Vegas, and on the exact first day of Zayn’s therapy session. Of course he ditched and went to have beer for old time’s sake. 

Opposite to Zayn, Harry had done close to everything with his Philosophy degree. He’d invested in grapes, hitch-hiked all the way to South Africa, got married in a Hungarian village where he tried to spend the summer (His wife still wrote letters, to which he replied in French), worked at a bar, worked at a swimming pool, worked at McDonalds on the Isle of Wight, bar again, and now he was waiting tables at a restaurant he claimed he liked because of the lightning.

 

“I think you should cheer up.” He told Zayn while they ordered their first pints, shrugging back his old, battered blazer-jacket. “And let me fuck Perrie, too.”

 

Zayn just snorted at that remark. He never knew whether Harry was serious or not. Maybe that was why he bothered staying friends with him – to not have to worry about his opinion. Half the time he couldn’t understand what he was garbling about, anyway.

 

“Go ahead.”

 

“Don’t go all gushy on me. You married her.”

 

“I sure did.”

 

And Zayn could remember the first time he’d seen Perrie, talking to a waiter at the charity event, telling him to not leave the spot no matter what, with the kid half pissing his pants. She’d turned around and her eyes had caught him with the force that had become familiar over time.

 

“We’re just not… a monogamous couple.”

 

“Then you’re not really a couple.”

 

Harry had a weird appetite when it came to women, and he had met Perrie exactly once. He had been asking to sleep with her in passing ever since. Zayn didn’t really give a flying fuck about any of it – and the thought depressed him. It would’ve been a relief if he could’ve mustered up the anger and jealousy and love, for God’s sake, to punch Brody Rogan square in the jaw. But he just… didn’t feel any of that.

 

And he sensed that Perrie knew it too.

 

“Look mate, we’re what? Twenty-nine.”

 

Zayn just groaned and buried his face in his hands. So maybe he was used to looking the way he looked. Maybe he took it for granted that no matter how big a fuck-up he was, people would always stare at his lashes for a second too long. But vanity had died along with his career, and he sensed that his good looks were going to go down the drain next.

And that was probably when Harry had to dig him a grave and bury him sans flower, for no one else would probably do it.

 

“Cheers.”

 

“At least you’ve found a wealthy cougar to pay for your sorry arse. Look at me, man.”

 

“You like that restaurant.”

 

“Only in a cryptic sense.”

 

Zayn sighed and grabbed his box of cigarettes. As weird as Harry was, Zayn couldn’t help but think about the things he said. He headed out the door of their pub, lighter already in hand. Harry sat back and stared into the air patiently.

He had somehow grown out of his looks, Zayn thought. The curls had flattened over the years and the smile had dimmed, but it made him look his age, look comfortable. While Zayn just looked like a post-cocaine, post-modeling, post-life wreck.

 

He took a deep drag out of his cigarette and sighed out the smoke with one gush.

 

They were in a decidedly less posh part of town, with the street light flickering and graffiti covering walls. It reminded him of home, which was nice, somehow, but also sank down on his nerves, forcing his thoughts on the long E-mail his mum had written him two weeks ago.

Zayn leaned back against the wall, sunk into it. The posture was familiar, like a clothing item you used to love but forgot about. He thought of countless afternoons in school, with his mates circling around him, passing the fag. His back against the coldness of a rough wall.

 

His eyes flicked up into the sky, past a few pedestrians who were singing rowdy Irish folksongs. The he jerked up and met Liam Payne’s eyes half way across the street. He was wearing a sort of expression that mingled surprise with dread with… something else. The guy he’d been passing by with had stopped a few paces down the road and was now hollering something which Zayn totally missed.

 

He considered, for just a second, to turn and walk back in to get smashed with Harry, pretend that moment where they both saw and recognized each other never existed. But then Liam was already crossing the street, his loud friend jogging after him.

 

“Hey, Zayn. You… how are you?” Liam extended a hand. A gesture so stiff and formal that it seemed foreign, and Zayn didn’t react for a few moments. Then he nodded, shrugged and shook Liam’s hand, noting the rough callouses on his palm.

The blonde lad had now caught up and thumped Liam on the back while eyeing Zayn suspiciously. “Ay, mate. What about those pints?”

“Right. Uh, Niall, this is Zayn. Zayn, Niall.” Zayn didn’t even bother nodding, while Niall just rolled his eyes and gestured towards the other side of the road again. “What about Ed? He’s waiting, man.”

“Just, just one minute.”

 

Zayn watched as the Niall person shot him a dark look from under his dyed fringe and walked off. He had obviously recognized where the two of them knew each other from, and he didn’t like the primness of it.

Then again Zayn was wearing his good shirt, because obviously there weren’t too many casual occasions in his life anymore where he could don something semi-fancy. People knew expensive clothing when they were looking for it.

 

“Uh.” Liam took a deep breath, his shoulders tensing in an upward motion. “I wanted to tell you. That I…that I saw.” He steadied himself on the brick wall and then put a hand on Zayn’s shoulder, a warm pressure. “I saw your wife, Perrie, with another man. At the charity event. I’m sorry.”

Once he was finished, Liam sagged back. He did look sorry. Zayn searched for his eyes and found them, with the bad lightning they were dark, glinting, and the creases were defined – like he’d smiled too much during his life. “Yeah, Brody Rogan.” He finally said, with another weird side shrug.

 

“Brody Rogan? But, I met his wife.”

“Yeah?” Zayn stubbed out his cigarette and shrugged. Again. He couldn’t seem to stop. All of a sudden, Liam was up and against him, broad shoulders closing in while his arms snaked around Zayn’s back and pulled him close.

“I’m honestly very sorry.”

 

What the hell are you sorry about? Zayn wanted to ask. But all he could feel was the steadiness of the hug, the warmth and Liam’s deep, controlled breaths next to his ear. He felt like pushing away, asking Liam what the fuck was wrong with him, why he hugged near strangers on dark streets. Zayn could’ve stabbed and robbed him for all he knew.

Then again, he felt like touching his lips to that throat and licking up until he could trace the jaw and miss the lips, kiss his way up to those crinkles next to his eyes. Kiss away the everlasting smile, or maybe keep it.

 

Before he could decide what he wanted at all, Liam was already stepping away, giving him a clap on the back. “Take care, yeah? Just, maybe tell her that you know? So you can talk about it. I’m sure it’s going to mend right.”

Zayn almost laughed at that. But he was too choked up with the softness of Liam’s furrowed brows to make a sound. He silently watched as Liam bid his goodbyes and gave him another shoulder squeeze.

 

“That’s a man to my taste.”

 

Harry was standing in the doorway, pint in hand, amused smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Zayn took the beer and downed it in one go.

 

They got phenomenally smashed that night. Embarrassing enough, two guys nearing their thirties with every second passed, drunk enough to not walk straight, drunk enough to stop thinking altogether. Harry told him, once they had made it to his provisional sleep place in some other people’s apartment, that they should have sex, for old time’s sake.

And though Zayn didn’t feel like it for one bit, he went ahead and spread his legs, letting Harry do what he did best.

 

He hoped sincerely that in the morning he would’ve forgotten who he had pictured while reaching his low.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kudos!


	5. In which Liam gets it up (hard)

Liam breathed hard into the pillow.

 

He sensed Danielle’s frustration in such sharp jabs that her hand tugging at him in practiced patterns felt almost violent.

It was by now a quarter past two and the red wine to welcome Danielle’s first real weekend in a long time stood forgotten by the side of their bed. The sheets were rumpled and Liam was supporting himself on his elbows while Danielle had her legs hooked behind his lower back in a familiar posture they both preferred.

 

The hand-job, truth be told, was growing increasingly painful.

 

“Liam,” Danielle did the little flick with her wrist that normally had him within seconds, “Li. Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Uh, yeah.” Danielle pushed her hips up in a slow rhythm, accompanying the drag of her fingers. “I just, I don’t know, Dani.”

They weren’t married for nothing – Liam was predictable like that, he himself was told. Niall kept suggesting he was programmed like a woman despite being male and heterosexual, No meaning Yes, Yes meaning Maybe and not knowing being a catastrophe.

 

Danielle had known him for almost ten years and had been living with him close to six of those. Naturally, she knew something was off.

Much to Liam’s relief, she pushed him to the side and crawled up to sit at the headboard, chest heaving, curls a wild halo around her face. She used to dance in university, but having chosen the road of success, exercise got downgraded to sit on the list among old school friends and music appreciation. Her figure had gotten rounder, naturally, and when she had first noticed and fretted over the extra weight, Liam had called her a little bronze goddess and eased her worries by making love to her and telling her that her thighs were the single most amazing thing.

 

Now he just wished himself into some clothes and out of the bed.

 

“What in the world is it, Liam?” She was getting back to her red wine, pressing a newly filled glass close to her bare chest. “I mean, this has never happened before…” She threw him a look and then quickly reached out to stroke the nape of his neck.

“I’m sorry, yeah?” Liam sighed and sunk back into the sweaty mess they’d made in their attempts to have sex.

“No, honey, that wasn’t accusing. God, it’s just… you’re off.”

“It’s fine.”

 

Along with the rest of her body, her bra size had grown considerably, and along with her frustrated shrug, her breasts bounced. For the first time in a while, Liam found himself not regarding to them in a sexual way whatsoever.

He himself had kept up his work-out routine, jogging through half the city, all the way to their old apartment and into the little forest. After Danielle had bought him a gym-membership, he went there, too.

 

Treadmills to run, weights to push.

 

It made him content in the weirdest way most people couldn’t quite appreciate.

 

“How was… how was your day?”

“My day was fine, Liam. We weren’t talking about me.”

“Why not?”

“God’s sake, because you were trying to make love to me just now.”

 

That sentence sounded so ridiculous that Liam almost laughed out loud. He managed to choke back his bitter bark and just shrugged. It wasn’t the first time she had referred to their sex life in such a euphemistic way – from the very start she had avoided talking about it straight forward. It had never bothered Liam before.

 

Now it did.

 

“Well, it’s not working, is it?”

 

They stared at each other for a second too long before Danielle got up and wrapped herself in a towel, clutching her glass of wine like it was a life line. She was overworked, Liam knew better than anyone. She hadn’t been home before ten the past month since her amazing dinner party and didn’t even bother complaining anymore.

 

“Wait, Danielle. Look, I’m sorry.”

 

She just shot him a glare and went out of the room with the towel half sliding off her hips. It was clear she thought he had just accused her of being unable to… pleasure him right, or something equally ridiculous.

His magic sense when it came to Danielle, and the six years of marriage told him to leave her alone, otherwise it might erupt into a one-sided screaming contest. And right now, he couldn’t even trust his own calm.

 

He could still see the smug look the guy had given him while mopping the floor.

 

The gym always stayed open till late on Fridays at it was statistically more likely for the ever absent 97% of the members to turn up. Liam belonged to the mighty, lonely fighter-group of the 3%.

He had promised himself not to let himself slack, and that reaching his thirties and feeling his hairline slowly but surely retreat wasn’t an excuse to not run a mile three times a week.

 

He had been leaning back after doing extra bench presses and gulping down water when one lad of the cleaning staff stopped his polishing on the large glass windows and turned around to stare him straight in the face.

Liam had never been more uncertain what to do, how to move or which way to face. He had stared right back and asked himself whether these were the situations life threw at you to check if you were already secretly berserk.

 

The lad off the cleaning staff had taken a step forward and broken out into a smile too big for his face.

 

The rest was a blur, but before Liam had known which way was out of the damn place, Mr. Cleaner had put down his mop and written a number on a piece of paper off some surprisingly fancy leather notebook he somehow had on him.

 

That piece of crumbled, thick recycled paper at page sixty-seven sat on the bedside table, underneath their heavy alarm clock, with an edge poking out. And it was the entire reason why Liam couldn’t get an erection and give his wife her much deserved relaxation.

 

His hand trembled as he retrieved it and scanned the line of numbers scrawled out in a loose script.

He had had a thousand and one chances to rid of it by now, and he hadn’t. Never mention that he had taken it in the first place.

Liam glanced to the door and let out his breath gently when he heard the TV humming with some dramatic tune, suggesting that his better half was off to the land of Lipstick Jungle or some such.

He got up and padded over to open the window, snatching up his phone on the way, feeling like a whole camera crew was tuned on his every move. The paper was smooth and expensive, smelling of something European and fruity, and Liam once again asked himself whether he had just imagined that fellow doing what he did.

 

Flirting. Was it still called flirting for those past the age of seventeen?

 

Liam had never been good at chatting up girls. He used to be good at looking dorky and adorable and sweet, but that image had passed along with his twenty-fifth birthday. It felt ages ago.

So now, as the man that he was and the stage that he was in, whichever that was, he knew absolutely nothing about reacting to random male strangers handing him their contact information.

 

Except that he had already reacted.

 

Before Liam could stop himself, throw the phone out the window or collapse in front of Danielle and confess that he had been toying with the idea of calling a random male stranger, he pressed the send button and held his breath.

It ringed a total of five times, which were perhaps ten seconds in which Liam saw his life flash by in a row of mistakes.

 

To the opening soundtrack of Desperate Housewives, he pictured himself stealing biscuits and being back-handed gently but firmly by his mother, a traumatic experience neither Niall nor Danielle could take seriously. It was the first time ever he remembered feeling guilt, low and burning and seemingly permanent. Then there was this one time he forgot an quiz and tried to cheat, that other time he kissed a girl whose boyfriend had been next door, or the time he promised to help a friend with his car but didn’t turn up because of a date with Danielle.

 

And now he was calling a male stranger who had apparently found him attractive. Liam could picture him, the curls falling around his neck sloppily, the lean shoulders and the tattoos. He had worn an air of youthfulness, even if his age had been apparent. God, if he thought about it now, he even knew what the lad’s eye color was –

 

“Yeah?”

 

Liam sucked back the air in his lungs so hard that he forgot to answer. There was a man on the other end of the line, indeed, just as he had expected. So maybe he had feared the inquiries of a female voice as well, but most of all he had dreaded speaking to Mr. Cleaner-and-Curls, because honest to God, he had no idea what to say.

 

“Yeah? Speaking?”

 

Another five seconds passed in which thundering applaud echoed from the living room. Then Liam punched himself in the gut mentally and opened his mouth: “I’m sorry, really, but you shouldn’t hand me any numbers, it’s not… its hardly appropriate. I just wanted to say that… uh, I’m very flattered but I’m also married so it isn’t an option.”

He suddenly really badly wanted to add something to comfort the poor sod, because honestly, married or not, Liam would’ve needed a gun to his head to hand his number to a stranger in a gym. “I was, uh, very flattered. Flattered, yes.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Liam eased out another breath and suddenly wondered what the hell he was doing here. He clearly wasn’t in his right mind – no erection, calling random strangers, garbling to them on the phone. Telling them he was flattered. Repeatedly.

 

“Maybe we should, like, introduce ourselves or somethin’?”

 

Liam sank back against the floor and sat down on the mess of their bed instead. The lad sounded amused, like he was grinning into the phone or something. Liam clenched his fist into the dirty sheets and noted how the panic was rising in his chest – Danielle, his wife, the woman he had sworn to spend the rest of his life with, was next doors. And here he was, calling up men and exchanging private information.

 

“I’m Liam. Payne. No, just, uh. Liam’s fine.”

 

“Hey Liam, I’m Zayn. Malik.”

 

“Right, right, Zayn. I’m really sorry, you see, I’m married. But, uh, complimented.”

 

“Who’s that?” And suddenly there she was, Danielle, dressed in one of his older T-shirts, holding a fresh glass of wine, poking her head in, looking like she was ready to have a round of make-up sex.

“Just Zayn.” Liam said, and his heart almost exploded in his throat while he silently marveled at the easy, light tone his voice had immediately taken.

“Zayn? As in, Perrie Edwards’ husband?”

“Right, that one.”

 

He ignored her raised eyebrows and the sharp angle her mouth had taken on, slipping out the door and onto the balcony. He watched her retreat back to her series of blonde women from the corner of his eyes, noting the tenseness of her shoulders, but not really caring for the moment.

“Sorry, that was my wife.”

“No, I’m sorry. Of course it’s Zayn Edwards.”

Liam gave himself a second before Danielle’s former question properly registered in his befuddled brain, and realization dawned on him.

 

The striking profile of that man against that posh background found its way back into his head again and he was absolutely wordless. He had been calling… but that man, that man who had flirted with him at the gym. Zayn wasn’t that man. “Oh, holy fucking shit.”

“Liam?”

“Yes.” He managed to croak out.

“Just, tell me who gave you this number, alright?”

“Yes, of course. I’m so… I’m sorry. I must’ve misdialed. God”

“No, just tell me.”

“I’m sorry… Oh God, it was at the gym, just, like. I never meant to, I was going to turn him down, I promise!”

 

He realized he was partly shouting when Danielle stuck her head back in, frowning and nipping at her beloved alcohol.

 

“You did just turn me… him down.”

 

“Right. God, I got to go. I’m really, incredibly sorry.”

And before he could do the world more harm, Liam pushed a few random buttons and dropped the phone into their dying potted plant. He still couldn’t believe what he was doing, who he had just talked to. Overwhelming shame mixed with a strong portion of embarrassment made Liam feel the heat all the way to the tip of his ears. He was a grown man, for God’s sake. Zayn probably thought that he was incapable of neither speech nor logic.

 

“Are you coming already?”

 

Liam turned around to see Danielle, already half drunk, leaning against the doorframe, hugging herself from the cold night air. And he really didn’t know what possessed him, but suddenly he was pushing her backwards and lifting her until they were both on the bed.

 

In his total confusion and with the haze of his pent-up energy flowing out, he repeatedly saw flickering images of just once the gym cleaner and Perrie fucking around in the bushes, and lots of times in between Danielle’s moans, he saw Zayn against the clear night sky.


	6. Coffee

Zayn was more on the passive side.

 

In fact, he was very much on the passive side. He hadn’t been a quarrelsome child, or so his mother liked to tell him fondly, but it took them right until his fourth birthday to get him to speak out loud. In school he did what the teachers asked of him, but no more.

Later on in life, he was easily absorbed into groups of difficult prototype teenagers – he smoked because they did, he mostly did what they urged him to do, he hung with them. In general, he was low maintenance and easy to cope with.

 

Harry had pounced on him the first day of Uni and announced that he was dark, mysterious and exactly the kind of person he was looking to befriend in this very episode of life. Zayn had blinked into the glaring autumn sun, shrugged and went for black coffee, ditching his introduction course. Instead, he listened to Harry going on about life in quizzical half-sentences, using weird words in weird places, and he honestly didn’t mind.

 

He wouldn’t have minded attending the course either.

 

But it didn’t really matter in the end, did it? He had been doing something, at least. Perrie had once asked him, in one of her drunken fits, whether he really cared so little, or if they’d just given him a pretty, immobile face at birth. The question hit him harder than he was ready to admit. It was true that he didn’t feel very strongly about her sleeping with other men – but maybe he hadn’t felt very strongly about her to begin with.

 

Perrie had asked him to marry her – they were on their infamous get-away to Vegas, both high on whatever substance, combined with copious amounts of ridiculously expensive alcohol. They were half tumbling over each other trying to make for the bed, looking nothing like the respectable adults they were supposed to be.

Zayn had said yes. The little word had echoed in his head for months after, but he couldn’t find any reason to say no. He was fucked up – as was his half-arsed education and his short-lived career. He’d rather strangle himself with a hotel towel than move back north, and Perrie had the financial means and perhaps even a passion for him that went beyond his face.

 

If opposites did attract, Zayn would’ve dated and married a sweet, talkative woman who didn’t smoke and loved to cook. But Perrie, by now Zayn was convinced that she was every ounce as messed up as he was. And that their relationship was mostly reliant on the performance of his cock.

 

But even on that side he had to be urged into performing.

 

The only few things he did on his own account were: painting, because it was the only thing he felt somewhat at ease doing, even if he never believed for the end-results to be genuinely good. Shopping, because somehow, even at this stage, his vanity was strong enough to kill a goat, or several. Then at last, smoking on balconies. That was one thing he actually could be confident of liking.

 

So when he stood in Harry’s new flat he shared with a retired couple and their dreadlocked-son, he searched for the balcony first. Perrie had kicked him out with a sordid look on her face, sitting in her negligée, waiting for Brody Rogan to arrive, who was apparently out and about with his wife to visit other happy couples who lived in pretend-matrimonial bliss.

 

She had been livid about not only her husband mugging around uselessly, but also at her lover ignoring her for the time being.

 

Zayn lit a cigarette and leaned against the balustrade, taking in the pinkish afternoon sky lit with promises for evening rain. He thought about mixing colors to fit the scenery, then about Perrie’s cleavage and her pale thighs, and at last, when old Mrs. Pavelyuchenko turned on a croaky radio station and Harry asked her to dance with his dashing soon-to-be-thirty smile, he let his mind wander towards the flustered, stammering voice on endless replay at the back of his mind.

 

Liam had rambled on, repeating himself, stuttering, apologizing.

 

Frankly, it had been pretty embarrassing, but Zayn found one corner of his mouth turned up in a weird angle whenever he tried to imagine the way Liam must’ve looked, mussing up his hair, betraying the calm friendliness he usually put on display.

Harry had nudged him and muttered something akin to ‘thank me later’, but afterwards, when Zayn had confronted him in their Friday pub, he had become serious, and told him that Liam was a genuine person, if maybe not a sex-god or blessed with an above-the-average intellect, and trust him, genuine people were hard to find these days.

 

“He’s also married and probably planning to have children.” Zayn had burst out, because he silently agreed to every word Harry said.

 

“Who cares?”

 

That amoral bastard.

 

Zayn spent the rest of the night eating beans on toast with the Pavelyuchenkos and their sulking, also soon-to-be-thirty son. Harry smiled at him across the table with a lifted eye-brow and then produced a bottle of crystal skull vodka that had everyone in tears of happiness, Zayn included.

 

For the billionth time in his life, Zayn got smashed at some random place with Harry, cheering as Mr. Pavelyuchenko broke out into some traditional Cossack dance routine. He woke up in the hallway of their big, posh house with Perrie’s heels clacking by and her voice telling him to get the fuck up and clean up the mess he’d made.

 

He wanked furiously during his extra-long, hot shower and tried to imagine the heat coming from someone decidedly more human. And male. Someone who didn’t know how to be gay at all, let alone muster up the courage to try.

 

And most important of all: someone who was faithful and loved. Like a normal person.

 

When the clock had hit noon and Zayn was once again staring at a new canvas, sensing all the other half-done, unfinished paintings staring back at him. Outside, it was another dreary day with people heading out, heading in, going about their daily business, moaning about it, but going ahead nonetheless. Never stopping.

He pictured Liam oiling up an engine part, eyes fixed on his work, hands moving expertly. In a job he was way overqualified for. A job he loved and that he had decided to peruse, no matter what other people chattered and gossiped about.

 

An hour later, he was at the Starbucks near Perrie’s office filling out a form, waiting to be interviewed for his first job in two and a half years, not counting the nude erotica he’d done a few months back out of the desperateness of it all.

 

There were plenty of other shops in town, but out of some impulse he just wanted to be somewhere they could see him, dread him, sneer at him. And he wanted the embarrassed frown Perrie always wore to become permanent, he wanted her to acknowledge him for what he was. A failure who worked at her favorite coffee shop.

 

The store manager took one look at him and immediately put him in charge of the counter.

 

His jawline still worked its wonders.

 

Once the first stream of costumers came in, Zayn felt the reluctance inside himself grow. He didn’t like smiling at strangers. Never mention talking to them. The girl in the back had taught him using the cashier with an angry look on her face, a look he recognized from all the people who had thought he was a deluded, empty shell, but wanted to snog him silly nonetheless.

 

He managed to get through a line of school girls ordering strawberry and caramel and whipped cream what-nots. Before recalling scenes from his adolescent that were exactly like that. All the giddish chuckling and squealing.

He was so preoccupied with his memories of Maria, Sonia, Lindy and that one girl who was either Jennifer or Monica, that he didn’t notice her until she was right in front of him.

 

“Tall latte please, the usual. Skim milk.”

 

Zayn lost track of his hands typing away while his mind raced to track back the memory of a large hand resting on that bloused shoulder, a tall figure standing next to her, stroking her back, smile so damn genuine.

Danielle looked up, while Zayn thought nonsensically of telling her that the mere sight of her had reminded him of her husband. Fuck, husband.

 

“Oh. Oh, yes. Mr. Edwards. Zack.”

 

Zayn didn’t bother correcting her, just scribbled down her order on a cup while glancing up repeatedly. He wrote ‘Denise’ on the blank for the name, and a tiny little part inside him sighed at the mere childishness of that act. But it somehow made him smile a little.

 

“I’m trying out for this position.” He told her, and found his voice to be surprisingly pleasant. “Still on probation.”

She half-chuckled at that self-deprecating joke and went around the counter to fetch her drink, frowning in irritation when the wrong name was called. She nodded goodbye while Zayn stared after her, noting the way her thick thighs were hugged by the fabric of her work-suit.

 

“She ain’t that attractive. Fat cow.” The girl who already hated and loved him threw a few timid but jealous glances out the glass window, scanning Zayn for a reaction. He just shrugged and went back to the next customer.

 

The store manager told him she’d get back to him, but he received a welcoming e-mail the same evening.

 

“God, no. That’s insane. You can’t work.” Harry told him over the phone, laughing his low, sleazy chuckle.

 

“You’re what?” Perrie asked him when he showed her the Starbucks Mail over Chinese takeout.

 

“Oh, Zayn.” Said his mother over the phone. She had written at least seven other e-mails in the last three weeks, and he regretted ever installing the computer and buying her typing-lessons.

 

Nobody was used to him being active, even in this remote sort of way. And to be completely honest, he wasn’t, either. But then he thought of Liam, which he did a lot these days – in a way religious people thought of Jesus or spiritual ones rubbed their rhinestones, and imagined him coming in the door and smiling a pleasant, surprised smile, eyes crinkling.

 

Zayn didn’t realize it was half past three until he noticed that his canvas was filled.

Filled with a torso and an open throat and a suit jacket, a white shirt on which he’d taken the liberty of opening a few buttons, a chin, a pair of hands.

He didn’t bother going to sleep, but he didn’t finish the picture, either. He drew the outlines of the rest of the face but left the eyes a blank.

 

Finishing would be somewhat like confessing to himself that he had, in his own, awkward way, dropped the passiveness for once in his life. Working at some coffee place was his way of getting out into the world – of getting closer to the real version of that unfinished painting.

 

Perrie came in at dawn and lead him to bed.

 

They just hugged each other with their eyes closed and minds drifting, and Zayn wondered for just a second, whether they were just really misunderstanding each other permanently and that a connection did exist. That even for the sake of loneliness and sex and awful black-coffee, there could be something just remotely love-like.

 

Then she got up and drove to meet Brody Rogan at some cheap motel, and Zayn went back to his own dreaming.

 

He felt a thousand years old when the sky turned a clear grey color over the city line and he scrolled through the contacts on his phone, just to find that he had already memorized the line of numbers on his record list by heart.


	7. In which Liam rips up and marches in

The living room was an utter mess.

 

Boxes piled on the floor while random objects littered all the other flat surfaces available. Six years of marriage lay bare, ready for the rubbish bin. Liam stood between it all and sighed, yellow cleaning gloves sticky on his hands.

Danielle had kissed him goodbye before heading off to that conference in Munich, and smiled an apologetic smile, while he reassured her that he would be okay for the weekend, that cleaning out the cellar was no problem whatsoever, the he’ll stay home to receive the parcel she was expecting.

 

He already had three of the large garbage bags filled with random stuff like anniversary teddy bears, fake jewelry Danielle didn’t wear anymore, a large diaper-cake made for them at false baby-alarm, single socks and for some reason a tin of dried up blue paint.

He was now progressing towards her stashes of magazines that had collected into an impressive pile over the years. She had written down the specific ones she wanted to keep and kissed him full on the lips for going through them. Liam had just shrugged and sighed in fake-exasperation. He was quite used to doing household duties by now, with her busy and successful and away all the time.

 

Outside the sun was blaring and Liam longed to head out for a nice little jog. He decided to hurry up and sat down heavily, removing the gloves with difficulty. The thick, bible-like things were stashed away in paper-bags, mostly of clothing stores, book stores, shoe-boutiques Liam knew she liked. And then there was a Starbucks bag, a rather big one, too.

 

“Guess who?” Danielle had asked him after dinner the week before, sipping her wine while he brewed himself a cuppa. “Who?”

“Perrie Edward’s husband.”

“What?”

“Working. At that Starbucks across our office building.”

 

Liam had tried hard not to react too violently at that, just shrugged with all the ease he could muster and went back to his tea. Now he sat and stared at the bag, recounting that dreadful call he’d made in his head, subconsciously correcting his rambling, idiotic self repeatedly.

 

“Get on with it, then.” He muttered to himself and piled out the first few magazines. Elle, Vogue, Women’s Health. She read the same few magazines in a rather routine way he’d never noticed. All the issues, January to December, were collected and neatly piled up for whatever purpose they were to serve after six years now.

He glanced over the list she had given him, making a big stash and a small one. Sometimes there were marked pages, on which there were probably items she liked, on several ones even with handwriting, adding comments.

 

An hour and a half later, Liam had stopped reading Danielle’s comments or appreciating the exotic outfits the models were put in. The damn magazines seemed to be never ending in quantity.

He made himself tea twice, before carrying out maybe a fifth of all the rubbish and coming back to sort out the rest of it. In between putting away a special edition Christmas Vogue of 2007 and turning on the telly for some distraction, Liam asked himself whether Danielle had always been this preoccupied with fancy, frilly things. She hadn’t seemed so very interested in what people wore and spent money on back when they met.

She’d been girly and lovely, with lip-gloss and mascara stains, of course. But it had never really caught his attention that she spent time on her appearance. Now it occurred to him that she had probably spent a hell lot of time on it.

 

He was reaching out to switch the channel, not wanting to watch that horrid episode of the Inbetweeners for the sixth time in a row, when a stash of magazines just toppled over and covered the floor, waving dust into the air and making Liam cough and splutter.

He took to swearing profusely before apologizing to no-one in particular. A weird habit he kept from his childhood.

 

The first few pages of the topmost magazines had tumbled open, displaying a row of models posing for Ralph Lauren, organized according to their sweatshirt color. Liam froze mid-bent to retrieve it as his eyes caught the familiar line of a nose, turned side-ways, eyes seemingly focused on the logo.

 

He had imagined a modeling Zayn looking even better than usual.

 

Well, he did.

 

Liam swallowed a few times until he was able to tear his eyes from the smooth bump of Zayn’s throat. He flipped through the remaining pages until finding another spread of the same ad, this time with the models jumping up, halting mid-movement, faces all turned towards the camera.

Curiously enough, Zayn had his eyes closed. He was at the very edge of the frame, holding onto the elbow of the blonde next to him, face relaxed, lashes thick against the pale lightning of the photo.

 

Before Liam knew what in God’s name he was doing, the page was already ripped out.

 

The next twenty-seven magazines were flipped through with a newfound vigor. After a while, Liam had a total of nine torn-out pages with Zayn in various combinations, colors, choreographies. There were the little square boxes that showed him walking down a runway in fashion shows, the group photos where he mostly lurked at the edges, the paired-up ones where he held onto another model. Some of the clothing seemed straight-out ridiculous to Liam, but mostly he just admired how poised Zayn could look, no matter what.

 

Through all of the pictures, he wore a look that edged on bored, with a lazy tilt of the face that could’ve also been questioning.

 

“Oh, God.”

Liam rubbed a hand across his face and dropped the ripped-out pages. What in the world was wrong with him? Was he obsessed? Sick in the head? His stalker-qualities were sure better than expected.

He picked out a random issue of Vogue and stuffed the by now white-hot, staring pictures of Zayn into a fold-in spread of some frilly Italian beach-shot, before setting the whole thing into the far corner of their book-shelve. He was breathing heavily by now, an unknown source of panic setting in – so Liam did what he did best.

 

He disposed of all the remaining stuff in their living room and went for a jog.

 

The burning stretch in his muscles had always helped Liam un-think. By now, he knew himself well enough to realize that he tended to over-think frequently, and that people, his wife included, didn’t always appreciate his nagging concern.

Working-out was his way of unwinding, of forgetting the fact that he had just acted like a love-crazed, crushing girl half his actual age. He imagined himself walking up to Zayn, extending a hand and saying something along the lines of “I’m a fan.” Or “Your lashes are so… pretty.”

 

“Can I touch them?”

 

Now he sounded like a proper freak.

Liam shook off the improper thoughts crowding his head and picked up his speed. The trees lining his favorite route shielded off some of the warm sunlight, but within minutes his T-shirt was soaked. He skidded around a few young families on their weekend outing, the toddlers babbling, crying, sucking on candy. He dodged a cyclist or two, feet carrying him on autopilot.

 

Danielle didn’t want any children. Not until they were settled, at least. Liam had dropped the topic a few years ago, but he felt very, maybe even too settled by now. He understood her reasons, her fear of maternity leave, of adding more responsibilities to their already packed life.

They were already so used to their rhythm, with her paying the rent and him brewing tea in the morning, with her business meetings and his late shifts. Liam had told her that he would be happy to take the first few years off, be a stay-at-home-dad, take care of the kids.

 

But Danielle had declined, insisting on the pill and protection.

 

It was a topic they didn’t breach anymore, one that would surely bring more conflict and late-night discussion, pro and con lists written and scrunched up, tears and apologies.

 

The next time Liam looked up, he was already half way through town. It was the distance Danielle usually drove every morning, and a quick glance around told him he really wasn’t that far away from her office, either. The street was quiet, with the weekend settling in and the buildings empty. A few restaurants and shops were opened, but it was quiet.

 

A few paces away a young man stood with a battered, old violin, playing a random but well-known piece by Vivaldi. Liam slowed down until he was walking and eventually stopped, wiping away the sweat from his brow.

A cool wind was blowing softly and the music soothed his senses. Liam leaned against the edge of a park-bench and sighed. Maybe he had overreacted a little bit – with the magazines and all the cleaning. He would go home and get rid of that last Vogue, forget about Zayn Edwards and the embarrassing phone call, maybe fetch a few groceries, call his mum.

 

The violin music stopped and Liam got his hands together to clap.

 

He smiled when the chap did a few sarcastic bows. It was so nice that he decided to sit down and enjoy the moment for a bit longer – who knew this part of town could be so pleasant when all the tight-suited business men weren’t there, being all important and iPhone-bound?

Another slower piece Liam didn’t recognize started, and he leaned back, squinting into the sun while feeling the droplets of sweat dry on his outstretched legs. When he looked back down, the first thing that jumped into his eyes was a gigantic Starbucks logo on the tall glass plane right behind Mr. Violin. And behind that logo was a counter.

 

Behind the counter stood a person.

 

Liam decided that looking away was probably the best solution, but that person, damn it, he was looking straight back and pretending that he hadn’t noticed would probably come off as rude.

So Liam just told the screaming voices in his head to suck it up and went straight in – because that was mostly his strategy when faced with something inanely socially uncomfortable. Face it, confront it, smile at it.

 

Zayn Edwards was wiping up a signature Starbucks coffee mug, eyes fixed on Liam, brows pulled together in a stiff frown. And maybe, maybe Liam had been wrong – he didn’t look better in some fashion magazine. As a matter of fact, those pictures didn’t do him justice in the slightest.

 

The door jingled when Liam pushed it open. The place was vacant save for an elderly couple and a younger man sitting at a table, sipping coffee and talking in a mixture of languages.

 

“Hey there!” Liam gave himself a little pat of the shoulder mentally for sounding so normal. “Danielle’s told me you work here!”

“Yeah.” Zayn placed the mug onto the display next to seven other identical ones, shrugging a little. It seemed to be habit of his, Liam noted. “Get meself some work.”

He was wearing a simple black T-shirt underneath his green employee’s apron and a pair of thick glasses. His hair was hanging down and a little flatter on the left side, like he had slept on it, or spent the night watching telly while lying down.

“I was just getting some exercise. D’you…“ want to come over here so I can smell your deodorant? Or touch your hair. Or both. “…have some water?”

“Sure.” Zayn immediately reached to his left for a stash of glasses before making a small step towards the water tap on his right. He seemed expert and in-place, like he’d been doing this for a long time and liked it, too.

 

“Hey.” Liam tore his eyes off the nape of Zayn’s neck and gave a reluctant look to the person who had just talked to him from the side.

“Hey, what… the hell?” A pair of green eyes stared back at him. Liam gulped down some air and took a step back just to have his eyes assaulted by a mop of curls. “It’s you!”

“Who else would I be?” Mr. Cleaner-and-Curls broke out into his wide smile again, reaching out a hand to place on Liam’s shoulder. “How are things?”

“You gave me your number.”

“Wrong. I gave you his number.”

 

They simultaneously turned their heads to where Zayn was standing with a slightly horrified look on his face and a glass of iced water in his hand.

 

“This is… this is my mate Harry.” He finally offered while handing Liam his water. “Haz, this is –“

“I know Liam.” Harry the cleaner smiled an even brighter grin. “We met at work.”

“Are you… still at the studio?” Liam shook his hand tentatively. “I mean, do you still… clean?”

“No, I quit that job. I switched to day-care with Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko.” He waved a hand towards the elderly couple who were now speaking something that Liam guessed to be Russian. “They’re Ukrainian. Charming. Good with Vodka, you know.”

“I… excuse me, what?”

From the corner of his eye, Liam saw Zayn smacking his face with an expression of dread while Harry waved over his clients, as he called them.

 

That’s how Liam found himself abandoning his plans for the day and sitting down with a talkative couple and a smirking Harry. He ordered two caramel lattes with extra whipped cream and couldn’t help but laugh when Mr. Pavelyuchenko told the story of the soviet goat in an extra-heavy accented voice. 

 

In between, his eyes kept skidding back to Zayn, who was leaning against the counter and smiling to himself quietly. His expression was guarded and his looks only fleeting, but the meek posture gave him something fascinating.

If it were an editorial picture, Liam would’ve betted all his money, which wasn’t at all much, that it would’ve made the cover of any damned magazine.


	8. Soup

So here was the thing about Zayn and his downfall.

 

In a very twisted, unforgiving way, you could say he brought it upon himself. The women, the drugs, the men, the parties that really weren’t for socializing but for scorn and gossiping.

 

Zayn wasn’t stupid.

 

Of course he saw the shaky hands and nervous eye-flicking, Martin Deerey with whom he had met at some semi-BDSM photo-shoot delivered into hospital and never making his come-back. He knew all about Olivia Audley, the stunning seventeen-year-old set up to run into the wrong people at the wrong time, just to ruin her new-signed deal with Ford.

 

He hadn’t felt sorry for her.

 

Though he was quiet and passive, Zayn was somehow cut out to survive in the ugly business of Modeling just fine. He kept his head down, showed up punctually and did whatever the creative director asked him to do. The suited woman who had discovered him on campus during one of his black-coffee-and-life sessions with Harry had chattily described him as: “an unobtrusive kind of beauty, darling, but once you take a second look, you won’t be able to go back to normal life ever again, honey!”

 

And Zayn never did go back to his old life. If it was because he had looked at himself in the mirror once too often, well. Might be.

 

He didn’t really do anything. He just followed all the instructions people gave him. People often told him that his job required a lot of creativity, a lot of heart and passion, blabla.

Zayn would shoot back that he had booked his best shoots and runways while being stoned beyond human belief, that really, it was about pretty faces being arranged on a set and draped with garments that were not just unnecessary but outrageous. Not a sane soul would put those on for free, let alone spend five hundred quid on it.

 

Except that Zayn never really shot back anything.

 

Maybe that was how he survived for so long. Picking a fight with him lacked the drama that other people wanted. It lacked a hysterical, willing participant to turn actions into gossip.

No, the other models left him alone and he had done just fine, if it weren’t for the bloody drugs.

 

That was the reason for it. All of it.

 

And Zayn had literally no one else to blame but his reflection.

 

At this point a comparison between his state of mind then (involving cocaine) and now (involving a married, heterosexual man) wasn’t that off at all. Both were social taboos, both put Zayn through anxiety, through bliss and self-doubt and countless sleepless nights.

The bliss occurred when he received a text message from Liam stating that he had been invited by Harry, who was talking for Mrs. Pavelyuchenko, who had received packages of dry-ingredients for Borscht from her sister Ekaterina in Odessa. And Zayn was invited too, because he was Mr. Pavelyuchenko’s favorite by far.

 

“Vat? Because he not talk all the time. Zatknys’!” 

 

Which meant shut up in Ukrainian, as Zayn quickly realized.

 

He didn’t bother telling Perrie about anything and left the house at a-quarter-to-eight sharp.

All guests were already seated when he arrived, Harry folding the napkins into little lotus flowers, Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko both buzzing around in the kitchen, talking to each other like a bomb was about to explode. Zayn took a seat at the end of the table, next to the dreadlocked, nearly thirty son Mikhail. Only then did he allow his eyes to scan the room and find Liam at the other side of the table, dressed in a neat, plaid shirt, buttoned up all the way to his throat. 

 

Zayn felt like laughing at his slightly failed formality, but found himself too choked up with his mere presence to do anything but breathe normally. The canvas was now thoroughly filled, save for the eyes. He still couldn’t do those.

 

“Mikhail Nikolayevich, move over.” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko shoved up to the table and placed a gigantic steaming pot at the center of the by now overloaded table. The dark-purple soup reminded Zayn of the fake alien blood that appeared in bad sci-fi flicks, but it did smell delicious.

Everything was served along with a bread so dark and sour Zayn almost spit it out again. Across the table, he could see Liam chewing with a stunned expression on his face, and he accidentally swallowed while smiling.

It turned out that dipped into the purple Borscht, the bread tasted better, if not normal.

 

“It is very long tale to be told indeed, the story of soviet goat.” Said Mr. Pavelyuchenko while finishing his third plate of Borscht.

“Dad, your doin’ me ‘ead in. We’ve ‘eard that one a billion times.” Dreadlocked Mikhail moaned in proper cockney while fiddling about with his bread.

“Zyén. You know good-for-nothing son was named after other common Mikhails in Ukrainia?”

Zayn coughed on his soup and took a drink out of his filled glass. He almost spit it out again.

 

It was Vodka.

 

“But I’m sure there are great Michaels in Ukraine as well.” Liam offered into the silence. “I think Danielle read some Dostoyevsky before she switched to economics.” He added, sniffing his glass before offering it to Harry.

“I read Anna Karenina in Uni. We both did, right Zayn?” Harry took a few gulps out of Liam’s vodka glass and smacked his lips. “Adulterous women. My favorite.”

“That was Tolstoy, though.” Zayn did remember reading a brick-like book about a Russian woman cheating and her husband going into the fields to find peace in mowing grass. It went on for ages.

 

“Zyénovovich. You must tell me name of father.”

 

It took Zayn a few seconds to realize he was being talked to. “I, uh. Selim?”

“Zyénovovich Selimowski.” Mr. Pavelyuchenko refilled his half-full glass and patted him on the back across the table. “You know Lev Tolstoy. Very good. Better than good-for-nothing son.”

Mikhail snorted and took another serving of the purple soup. 

 

Across the table, Liam laughed into his napkin.

 

The evening ended with Mr. Pavelyuchenko passed out on the couch, good-for-nothing-Mikhail nowhere to be seen and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko bustling about in the kitchen. Harry, true to form, still had a bar-tending job and a date with his very own Anna Karenina and had disappeared to dress himself.

He had also nudged Zayn in the ribs and nodded towards Liam, who was busy cleaning the table of stains he apparently didn’t realize were already a few decades old.

 

It was remotely the same. The dizziness, the unreal feeling to it. At his worst times, Zayn had stayed out-stretched on someone’s carpet with just one of his five credit cards and another pile of pure, virgin-white powder.

Now he felt like not getting up ever again, too. Liam was there, right there. Not on his canvas, not as an imaginary hand in the shower. Not in his dreams. Right there.

 

“You go home, Zyénovovich. I take care.” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko smiled at him beneath the patterned scarf wrapped around her head. “You too, Mr. Payne.”

Liam walked to stand next to Zayn, and all of a sudden they were so damn close. “Thank you, Mrs. Pavelyuchenko. It was really so delicious.” Liam reached out sincerely, taking her hands in his. “You must give me the recipe. Duže diakuju.“

Mrs. Pavelyuchenko was moved to tears while ushering them out of the apartment, responding to Liam’s two-word Ukrainian in an outburst of long sentences neither of them understood.

 

“I think I’ll take a Ukrainian crash-course.” Liam was smiling when they headed towards the same direction down the street, into the cool evening air. “Such friendly people.”

“I did read Tolstoy.” Zayn said, because he legitimately didn’t know what to say. “In Uni. Y’know.” 

“Oh God. I did an engineering degree, so no Russian prose for me.” Liam gave a tentative laugh. “Though I’d like to, some day.”

 

Zayn casted his profile a glance.

Harry was right. There weren’t many genuine people left in the world. As a matter of fact, Liam was probably the last person to ever smile and mean it. No intention, no secret agenda, no malicious plots to ruin others.

 

It had Zayn breathless, had him gagging for it, to be honest.

Because it confirmed the thought he’d had from the first time he’d laid eyes on Liam: He was everything Zayn wasn’t, everything he secretly wanted for himself. And now, watching the crinkles around Liam’s eyes and the gentle curve of his lips, he felt completely at loss.

 

“Today was a really nice change, actually.” Liam was watching him, Zayn suddenly realized. His eyes were darting up and down, roaming his face, gliding down his bone-structure. “I usually spend this time sitting at home, waiting for Danielle.”

 

And there it was, the downward spiral. Coke made you forget everything but also hit you across the forehead with a stone hammer. You had to up the dose, take more, more, more. And Liam could knock you out with just a few words. Zayn couldn’t actually decide which was worse.

“I sort of stopped waiting for Perrie.” Zayn heard himself saying. He immediately regretted it when Liam stopped walking and placed a hand on his back. The proximity was killing him.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Liam looked down onto the pavement. “It didn’t go well, then?”

“Uh. No. No, I guess.” Zayn shrugged and tried his hardest to tear away his eyes from the slight stubble on the downside of Liam’s chin. He wasn’t very good at shaving that part, it seemed. When his eyes flicked up, he was surprised to find Liam angry.

 

He wasn’t even aware that it was within his emotional range to feel anger.

 

“Liam. It’s, it’s fine I guess. Like, I don’t even care that much anymore.” Zayn didn’t know why he was explaining himself. “Really.”

Liam was walking again, this time a little faster, his fists clenched, the veins showing up all the way to his elbow. Zayn realized with a mild horror that it turned him on before he jogged to catch up.

 

“I. Actually my car is parked the other way.” Liam nodded to no one and nothing in particular. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Zayn heard himself say softly.

 

They bid their goodbyes, and Zayn stood there, a few blocks away from Harry’s new Ukrainian apartment and watched the curve of Liam’s shoulders as he made his way back down the street. Two streetlights later, he was turning around again, looking towards Zayn, brows furrowed, fists still clenched.

 

“Why did Harry give me your number?”

 

So Zayn turned around and walked, pretended it was a runway and watchful eyes were on him, like he wasn’t dressed in one of his generic black T-shirts and carrying an old rucksack with half a loaf of dark sour bread.

 

He could feel Liam’s presence even when he turned back and found him gone.


	9. In which Liam comes undone (comme un cadeaux)

Liam should’ve guessed that after almost three months of peace and quiet, it was time for another evening of dread again.

 

Interestingly enough, this time it was a private event made public in every way possible. A senior partner of the company’s was celebrating his fiftieth and invited everyone and their mother to attend the little gathering, as they called it on the thick, perfume-leaking invitation card.

 

Danielle made it very clear a few weeks prior that this partner was a very important one and that she would like him to accompany her.

So Liam found himself spending the three or four days before the event cramming people’s names and titles, wrapping not just the birthday present but also ‘small gifts’ for all five children and the wife.

 

He checked later and found that the wooden, Norwegian toys were worth half his month’s wages. But, oh well.

 

If Liam were completely honest, and he usually did pride himself with his frankness, he wasn’t all that focused on the things Danielle was blabbering, anyway. There were a few things that kept him from remembering the name of the senior partner’s wife’s gallery:

The Vogue magazine still sitting on the far end of their bookshelf, sandwiched between an old Spanish dictionary and a collector’s issue of the Economist from 1905. The frequent phone calls from Mrs. Pavelyuchenko. And then the text message on his phone, dating two days back and still unanswered, reading: “Goin 2 dat posh bday party??”.

The text message had made Liam laugh out loud, because the brief sentence had been so full of hidden disdain. Then again, Zayn texted like a teenager.

 

He had spent most of his time jogging into the opposite direction of that Starbucks shop and wrecking his brain for an adequate answer that would make him sound agreeable, not overbearing and somewhat his age. It resulted in him not writing back at all.

 

Danielle had gotten herself a new cocktail dress for the event. She went on an impromptu shopping tour with a few of her old friends from dance class and came home carrying paper bags with silk-string handles and a big, relaxed smile. Liam hadn’t seen her so happy in ages, so he just sat himself down and took in the whole fashion/beauty haul.

In between he wondered how they’d become so cliché, but what made her happy made him smile, too. So that actually lightened up their entire apartment.

 

“Woman like new dress if they young, tak, tak. If get old like me, no more need! No need! Sister Olga’s daughter – she wear fur! She shopping all day. She speak Russian, no Ukrainia!” Told him Mrs. Pavelyuchenko on that matter. She went on to rant about the Ukrainian struggle to independence during the dissolving Rossiyskaya Imperiya and her father’s role as a Nationalist.

 

Liam almost felt the need to take notes.

 

He liked the thought that a daily phone call gave her joy – it certainly did with him. Danielle had just cocked an eyebrow at that, wearing the same look she had when he had told her that he was talking to Perrie Edwards’ husband. The whole Ukrainian dinner episode had not interested her too greatly, but granted she had been in a fuss over some contract and getting lawyers.

 

Niall had commented on the entire issue with doubt. He, along with Eddie, had never been awfully keen on socializing with ‘your wife’s lot’, as he put it. Growing up in a working class family, nurturing his ‘Irishness’, he carried a sort of ancient weariness along that was probably embedded in the quarrels of history, and made him suspicious about anything that suggested English and Money. He liked people just fine, but only people that meshed well with him, that weren’t too la-di-da, too proper to sit down and have a pint.

Liam cherished him as a friend, he really did – nobody was more loyal than Niall. But it also unnerved him how the lad thickened his accent so much on purpose that Danielle couldn’t understand half the sentence.

 

So that was how he reacted when he came over with a few bottles of Guinness and a head of freshly dyed blonde hair.

 

“Don’t even know why ya’r going, mate.” Liam was putting the last decorating touches on the tastefully velvet-red parcel, tying a bow with nimble fingers he had developed over the years by sewing buttons and zippers in Danielle’s busy absence.

“You don’t know why I’m married to her, either.” Liam said with a soft snort. “Hold open that bag for me, will you?”

“Right you are. Giving me cheek, are ya? But you realize the Old Firm is on that day?”

Liam groaned. He had been somewhat looking forward to the match, but then again, Vogue, Mrs. Pavelyuchenko and the text on his phone had kept him so preoccupied that he forgot to remember. 

“Your loss, mate. Your loss.” Niall downed a third bottle of his beer and shrugged along with an easy going smile that bordered on challenging. He was silently asking Liam to skip and join him and the lads.

 

“Really, Niall. I can’t. She already asked me.”

 

So that’s how instead of having a genuinely nice evening out Liam ended up dressed in his best suit and holding an oversized bouquet of flowers. Danielle was stood next to him, fixing her collar and altering between her serious ‘we’re business partners’ face and something perhaps a little too bubbly for her age.

 

The Mansion suggested old money, at least a knighthood within the family. They were led in and introduced, the birthday boy greeting them with an indulgent smile that suggested he knew he had the cash, he knew Danielle was meant to be his rank, but really, she wasn’t. Also he seemed very informed on Liam’s occupation and thus met him with a smile edging on pity, suggesting that he’d have people bring in beer if he preferred that.

His wife, a native French, only did a mild flick with the eyebrow while accepting the presents, dark, glossy hair bobbing along to her frantic head movements.

 

It was everything Liam had expected and everything he secretly disliked.

 

Danielle seemed to get on just fine, for whatever reasons, and immediately took to complementing the wife’s gorgeous designer gown, which made her smile a little bit, lightning up her face with a glow that suggested she was younger than she presented herself.

 

The sitting room was lined with shelves of books and age-old paintings of magnificent ancestors. Tinted in the warm glow of the handsome fireplace, it would’ve been enjoyable. With the people filling it Liam found it merely tolerable. He silently thought to himself whether Niall had rubbed off on him – usually such events triggered mild impatience and sometimes dread, but he had never before thought so unkindly within two minutes of setting foot into the place. 

 

The children were all dressed up and lovely, speaking a fluent mixture of English and French, the youngest one still within the grasps of a nanny. The oldest was already eleven, but with the European mother he was sent to a day-school and not something posh and miles away. “Louis eez very clever, you see.” Mrs. French-Mum told all the oohing and aahing people gawking at her son. “He eez too précieux to send away.” 

Liam just nodded in agreement while suppressing a smile at the petulant look the boy was wearing. He quickly coughed away any unnecessary facial expressions when little Louis narrowed his eyes on him and frowned.

They had all the gifts piled up neatly on a table in the corner, the younger children already fidgeting and pointing at the more boldly colored ones. 

 

In between admiring a complete set of biographies of Margret Thatcher and a framed photograph of the senior partner as a soldier during the Falkland wars, Liam caught the blonde head of Perrie Edwards from his peripheral vision and froze like a candle. Perrie was shaking hands with a few balding, old men and their wives. Liam cringed when he recognized the Violet lady from Danielle’s dinner party all dressed up in an almost neon shade of green, and then, right beside her.

 

Stood Zayn.

 

It came as a shock even though Liam had been informed, had known to expect him, expect the half-lid look and the soft hair at the nape of his neck, the lean line of his back and the way his lips were pressed together. He had one arm around Perrie, with her pressing closer to his side somewhat demonstratively.

 

“What are you staring at?”

 

Liam whipped around to excuse himself to the person who had just spoken. It took him a minute or two to look down and take a step back. Louis, the eldest son was blinking at him with large, blue eyes, honey-colored fringe framing his little face. 

“Uh, Lewis. Hello there. Nothing, I’m… nothing at all.”

“You were staring at the lady daddy’s company has a strategic partnership with.”

“No, Lewis, no – not at all. I was just admiring your furnishing.”

“It’s Louis.”

“Excuse me?”

“My name’s Louis.”

 

His speech was conspicuously clear and fluent, his use of words precise, completely lacking in the childish tone that made children the way they were. It was marginally creepy and mostly impressive.

A lady walked by, patting Louis’ head and asking whether he liked the present she had given him. “Yes, ma’am. It… it was so lovely.” Blinking his eyes, Louis blushed a little and stuttered. The lady cried out with delight before being dragged on by her partner.

 

“So, who were you staring at?”

“No one.” Liam decided that being brief was probably the best solution to this horrific, overly-mature child. “Why don’t you go find your nanny?”

“She is. Not. My. Nanny.” Louis cocked a brow. “I’m not handicapped, I can read. I can even stir my own cereal.”

“I’m surprised you know what cereal is.” Liam found himself shooting back, even before he could feel the shock of the clear sarcasm dripping from the child’s words. He immediately felt bad: what was wrong with him today? Being snide with children, scorning other people’s nice houses while being on their Birthday party. A few feet away, Zayn was still standing next to Perrie, but a tingling sensation in his tummy told Liam his own presence had been noted upon, too.

 

“You’re looking at her model-husband.” Louis took a step to the side and stood on the tip of his toes to get a good look. “And you’re not as nice as you try to look.”

“Just… excuse me, for a second.” Liam shook his head and made to walk off. Faintly, he heard Louis’ laugh: “I’m just a child, no need to excuse yourself.”

It panicked him a bit that it had been so obvious to an eleven-year-old that he was sneaking peaks at Zayn.

Once he had politely joined the group and fixed his eyes on him, all thoughts of weirdly mature children and Niall’s unsupportive shrugging were pushed aside. Zayn was looking right back at him, shoulders tense, hands stuck in the pockets of his trousers. He looked somewhat unreal compared to all the other unattractive, self-important twats.

Liam shook his head. Where in the world did that come from? God, he really was off today.

 

“God, I was looking for you!” Danielle suddenly had a firm hand on his back and Liam sighed at the familiarity of it. He was handed a glass of orange juice and told how much the kids liked the Norwegian wood toys. “Lewis, the eldest one, told me to thank you especially!”

“It’s Louis.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

 

When he turned back, Zayn was gone. Perrie was still discussing the merits of bilateral contracts with another tuxedoed man, whom Liam recognized with a sudden jolt as Brody Rogan. His wife Jennifer was by now talking to the Violet lady, doting on the countless rings she was sporting.

 

No wonder Zayn had disappeared.

 

His wife was actually talking to the man she was cheating on him with in public, like it was no big deal. Liam felt a sudden flare of anger in the pit of his stomach, a similar sensation to what had gripped him a few weeks back, with Zayn standing under the dreary light of the street lamp, telling him that he had stopped waiting.

“I’ll be just a second.” He murmured while placing his orange juice on the mantelpiece. Before anyone could ask any questions, he was already out of the room, into the hallway, eyes darting about to find Zayn.

 

Like a weird sort of magnetism, he almost right away found the person he was looking for. Zayn was sitting on the more shadowy part of the broad stairway, elbows pushed on his knees, eyes downcast. Liam’s feet carried him up, step by step, until he was standing level-eyed with the crouching Zayn.

 

Of course Liam knew why Harry would give him Zayn’s number.

 

He wasn’t that daft.

 

Just, Liam had a hard time imagining someone like Zayn taking interest in him, out of all humans on this planet. He had a hard time coming up with reasons – so maybe Liam was a nice guy, everybody agreed to that. Maybe he wasn’t completely ugly or boring, but, really. Why him?

Plus, he was married. Happily married. And if calling strange men on the phone was off limits, so was probably talking to them. Or meeting them for Ukrainian dinner. Receiving text-messages and fretting over them for weeks.

 

“So you came.”

 

Zayn cocked a lop-sided smile that made him look lost. His thick brows were knitted and his eyes wouldn’t focus on Liam. There were bruised shadows under his eyes, like he had forgotten to sleep and rubbed salt into it, too.

“Uh, yeah, I did.” Liam swallowed. “Danielle made me come, actually.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

 

They both remained silent for a second before Liam nodded towards the dark staircase. “Do you, uh. Want to go see the private rooms not meant for strangers eyes?”

Zayn laughed at that, but the look he threw Liam was scorching. “Yeah, right. Why not?”

So that’s what they did. Liam backed up and made sure everyone was already done greeting and tucked away in the sitting room with Champagne. The sound of a spoon clinking against a tall glass and a curt clearing of the throat told him nobody would come looking. Not when the important business partner was having his speech of thanks.

 

Liam actually really hated speeches.

 

Dread was such a light word in comparison.

 

He walked up the stairs in a regular pace, feeling the tension rippling through him. In between kicking the door to the study room shut and finding Zayn sitting on the broad desk, weakly illuminated, contoured by shadows, Liam found a part of his old self and just a split-second to ask what in the world was wrong with him today.

 

Then he was already striding towards that man he had known for maybe three months now, almost knocking off a pile of books in the progress of it. Everything was slow and strangely lit. Zayn’s eyes were wide and his mouth was slightly parted.

When their lips clashed together, Liam felt electrocuted.

 

Downstairs, the applause died out.


	10. Breath

Zayn had had his fair share of affairs. 

 

It wasn’t difficult, either. With his looks and the cash and the semi-important people he knew in the fashion industry, offers were made on a daily basis. There were the ones he agreed to because he genuinely found the other person attractive, the ones he slept with because it promised him privileges of some kind, and then with some he did it just because he could.

 

His year-long, everlasting fuck-buddy relationship with Harry didn’t count, because sex wasn’t at all the main point between them, just a minor bonus they used when the occasion called for it. Becca and her daughter and the shared breakfasts – in retrospect it really wasn’t an affair, but more of an undefined relationship. He had definitely felt something for her. Whatever it was and however reluctant he was to think about it, they had shared something more than just the occasional romp in the sac.

Perrie had at first been interested in his past, whom he had fucked, whom had fucked him, whether there had been anyone permanent at all. As time passed she probably deemed his sexual history impossible to behold, because it was longer and way more obscure than the Chinese one, let alone the British.

 

Zayn didn’t call those people who shared his mattress space his lovers. He usually couldn’t even remember their faces after the end, and to be completely honest he wanted to keep it that way, too. Too many names haunting him already. Sometimes he would dream of a mixture of body parts, mismatched eyes, breasts and thighs and broad shoulders, lipstick and stubble against his cheek.

 

But really, only sometimes.

 

Liam was different. It sounded cliché and cheap, but Zayn could feel it from the tug in his abdomen, the way his throat constricted and the sharp pain in his chest that Liam wasn’t going to end up a faraway name, a mere pair of lips sucking at the side of his neck like some distant memory.

He didn’t sleep at all after the posh Tory’s birthday party, Liam’s breath still scorching hot against his collarbone. The next morning while brewing coffee, it all felt like a dream.

He didn’t budge until Perrie started talking about some joint conference in Leeds underneath her cucumber mask. She was going to be away for the weekend.

 

His brain immediately sprung to a mode that could only be described as that of a clever adulterer. Not that he actually needed to keep anything a secret from Perrie – she would probably be amused, or annoyed by the unnecessary information. But keeping the dimly lit kiss in the study all to himself somehow preserved the private touch. It was a moment that nobody could take from him, not now, not in future time. Those three and a half seconds in which Liam walked towards him and closed his hands around his face like he was precious.

 

“What is it?”

Zayn looked up, blinking into the harsh sunlit morning light. Neither of them were morning people, but for some reason they just seemed to be up before six every other day. “Wha’?”

“You didn’t sleep. Again.” Perrie looked pale underneath her self-pampering and the wet blonde curls clipped above her forehead.

“Dunno. Just, weather, I guess.” Zayn shrugged and took a sip out of his cup. In the creamy brown swirl he saw the blink of a warm, chocolate brown eye. He was honestly having visions now. “Maybe I’ll go have a lie-down or somethin’.”

“You do that.” Perrie peeled a cucumber slice from her chin and slapped it down on the counter. She made for the bathroom but turned back again, eyes fixed on the sky outside.

 

“Remember, I’ll be back on Sunday by six or so.”

 

And maybe she did know him better than anyone else. Zayn didn’t bother thinking about her knowing, but went back to bed and slept until a quarter past three. He had to subsequently rush for his late shift at the Starbucks, tugging on clothing items haphazardly. But it still felt nice to have somewhere to be, to be sure that people were waiting for him to turn up and take over, however small a responsibility it was that he held.

 

Mrs. Love-Hate, or Georgie as her employees tag read, was already waiting at the counter, bag in hand, good to go. Her eyes switched back and forth between blatant desire and irritation. She still hadn’t decided whether she wanted to suck him off or slice up his cock, even after Zayn had made a few attempts at being friendly.

But she helped him with the first three strawberry Frappuccinos and got him a new apron when half the milk spilled, so maybe that was a small improvement.

 

Customers came and went, it rained for a while shortly before sundown, cars hurried by, a young woman started an argument with her taxi-driver. It was life that rushed by before his eyes, all painted on the canvas that was the pale-grey sky. Zayn felt the urge to sketch everything down every now and then, but just painting in his head gave him a weird surge of pleasure as well – he allowed himself to tuck the people he knew and maybe cherished into corners and shadows of his imaginary paintings. Perrie’s blonde head at the corner of the street, Harry sitting in one of the cabs rushing by, off to another adventure. Mr. Pavelyuchenko poking at the rustling pigeons.

 

Liam walking by, glancing through the windows, smile dimpling his cheeks.

 

The wet pavement glistened in the rays of the setting sun. A few hours left until his shift was over. The paintings in his head were air-drying, the colors still vivid against the back of his eyes.

Zayn’s mum had asked him to come home for Christmas, even if it was still a good few months away. He had told her that he would think about it, that there were things down here he had to tend to.

 

Bullshit.

 

He just didn’t want her, his sisters and neighbors, the school friends who never left and now had families and occupations, his father, seeing him. Seeing the life he was leading – having them disapprove of it.

He knew his mum had collected and saved all the magazines and ads he had appeared in, book-marked them, showed them to anyone who would listen. The shame still burned low in his stomach from the last time he’d driven home and felt the awkwardness people now greeted him with. Because he was a success and he was living in London and Paris and Milan.

How would they welcome him now that he was a cocaine-snorting mess of a trophy husband?

 

The door jingled a soft tune as it opened, and Zayn straightened up to welcome a late customer.

 

The cap Liam removed was soaked, underneath his hair had taken a soft, natural curl. His eyes were still darting back and forth, like someone had been chasing him down the street. Then he drew in a breath and met Zayn’s eyes across the counter.

“Hi. I thought… I thought I might nip by and have a coffee.” And even with the edge of a stricken look still stuck to his eyes, his lips curled up into a smile that made the rest of his face tilt up.

“Just… normal. Coffee, I mean?” Zayn almost bit his own tongue with the effort of getting out the right words.

“Yeah, just. With milk.”

“Skim?”

“God, no.”

 

A silence fell over them as Zayn busied himself preparing the coffee. He put a few biscuits on the side of the saucer and scolded himself for heating up. Their hands touched when he handed over the cup, and it was something like an electric bolt that went through him. 

Liam stared at the coffee, the biscuits, and then back at Zayn. His eyes carried something that might’ve been disbelieve, an edge of worry and a whole lot of what Zayn recognized as awe.

 

“Listen, I just…”

“Perrie told me they’re…”

 

They both stopped talking and gestured for the other to carry on. Zayn felt a little smile tugging on the corner of his mouth and he shrugged, out of pure habit. Liam ran a hand through his wet hair and took a heavy breath in. “I’m free for the weekend.”

“So am I.” Zayn could feel his heart beat all the way up to his throat while he watched Liam’s brows draw together in immediate guilt. They had just arranged the continuing of the started affair.

 

Before Zayn could think again, he was already leaning across the counter, leaning over his wild, erratic heartbeat, leaning up to kiss Liam. He was almost scared to feel him shy away, but Liam met him with an unexpected force, hands reaching to hold him in place, mouth parting.

Zayn started to see flecks of white behind his eye lids, his lungs were constricting from the lack of oxygen, but he just wanted this moment to last. Every second they held on would count for his future ability to smile.

 

“How long…” Liam gasped against his lips, breath hot, tasting of coffee. “till you close up?”

“Forty minutes tops.” Zayn whispered back. He found that his voice wasn’t working properly anymore. At the same time, he felt the urge to smash something, to scream. “You waitin’?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

 

They jerked apart when a flustered working mum stomped in with two children in raincoats. Zayn prepared more lattes and hot hazelnut chocolates while Liam sat down next to the entrance, sipping slowly from his mug, eyes watchful. He smiled when Zayn gave the kids extra whipped cream, he played with his phone, he gazed out into the darkening sky. His cap lay on the table, drying along with Zayn’s imaginary paintings.

He helped with putting up the chairs and wiping up the tables, talking lightly of his work day, of motors and machine parts and Eddie’s birthday they were planning. Zayn realized he felt involved without knowing any of the people when they were switching off the lights in the back.

 

He let Liam into the staff’s room and managed to untie his apron before their lips were attached again.

 

“God.” Liam was saying. “God this is insane.”

And maybe it was. But they both didn’t let go for one second, Liam tightening his hands around Zayn’s shoulder while Zayn buried his hands in Liam’s drying hair. The semi-darkness enveloped them while they stumbled against the far wall, the back of Zayn’s head connecting rather painfully with one of the coat hangers. 

But he barely felt anything that wasn’t Liam and his hands, his lips.

 

“I actually have to… go.” Liam managed to breathe out, taking a step back. “I’m sorry.”

Zayn swallowed the bitterness that instantly filled the back of his throat, the dizziness keeping him from doing anything rash. “No. Right. Of course.”

 

“Zayn.”

 

Liam stroked his thumb to his cheek bone, softly, and he was taking a deep breath again. “Text me the address? I’ll come by at noon.” The he was leaning in and pressing an innocent, light peck right on the spot he had touched just now.

All Zayn could do was nod.

 

Later on, he couldn’t even recall when Liam had left, couldn’t remember how he had locked up the store and walked home. It occurred to him that his heart was still beating in the crook of his neck, and that he kept smelling the cologne Liam had worn.

 

The first thing he did once he could still the shiver in his hands was head to his room and sketch out his imaginary painting. Then he remembered and scrambled to write the text message, hands shaking with the force of the blood rushing through his veins. He chain-smoked three or four cigarettes in a row before mixing a few colors that felt right. A lot of brown. Deep sea-blues and sparks of a purple hue, a green that bordered on turquoise. Soft yellows.

 

Then he took out the smudged canvas with Liam’s open throat, with his unbuttoned shirt and mapped out the eyes.


	11. Interlude (“For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises“)

Danielle hated unorganized mornings with passion.

 

She hadn’t always been this adamant about scheduling. As a matter of fact, she had been the type of girl to run late for class and bat her eye lashes at the professor for forgiveness. Her room in Uni had been a right mess of jumbled clothes, text-books, makeup-remover and chocolate wrappers. Liam had laughed aloud when they stumbled through the door for the first time, making out heavily, and slipped on a pair of old knickers.

She had then secretly known that after so many years of existing and noticing boys, she had finally found her type.

 

As a younger, frecklier (but just as disorganized) girl she had forced herself to date for the sake of dating, because she straight-out hated feeling left out. And if Monica was dating Jay and Allie was around the corner snogging Brian, then she wasn’t going to sip her drink alone.

It resulted in a row of so called boyfriends that differed so greatly in looks and personality that she gained a reputation among her female friends as ‘the one without a type’.

 

Liam was her type.

 

He didn’t mind her being a right mess in the literal sense back in the days, and he didn’t mind her evolving into the borderline control freak she was now.

Not that it really was that awful – so she needed to lay out her suit and line up her lipsticks before going to bed, but it really was helpful with all the early mornings. She had learned that the hard way. She didn’t like the laundry lying around because there were exactly three trousers that actually suited her fat arse, and with the fiscal reports and meetings and Greece dying a slow, painful death, she needed to look at least a little bit presentable.

 

Who invested in southern Europe, anyway?

 

She had started off doing six literature courses a week and reading Pushkin in her free time. It was exactly what she wanted, and being the idealistic, freedom loving girl that she was, Danielle dreamed of libraries and her name printed across the papers in the Feuilleton section.

It turned out that the road to a successful career as a librarian required far less knowledge of contemporary Russian literature, but a lot more administrative skill, logistics, organizing.

After that was out of the question, she tried her luck with the performing arts very briefly, finding out that the world of the professional dancer was cruel and full of pain, and mostly that even as one of the best out of her amateur class, she was far from the ones who did nothing but train, stretch, train, stretch.

 

It had been a good few years of struggle, and having Liam there with her gave a sense of security. In every way, including the financial aspect – even if she should end up a complete and total failure, Liam would support her. It was completely anti-feministic and against her values and beliefs, but the idea of being a house-wife served as a last resort to her.

 

It didn’t come down to that, though.

 

Liam dropped out and went to work in that what-was-it factory of his, all enthusiasm and passion for the good old handiwork, and Danielle freaked. So she dropped out, too and started anew tackling a degree in economics.

 

Thus began her transformation into a person who hated unorganized mornings.

 

Liam was already sitting at the breakfast table when she trudged out in her soft bathrobe, reading the sport section and sipping on a glass of milk. He hadn’t changed much, as far as she was concerned. Still the same posture, still the same bed-head. His five-o-clock shadow was more defined now, the creases around his eyes more permanent. He had lost the boyishness she had first fallen for, but it was still him.

 

The first white, silvery hairs had developed at the back of his head, but she never bothered telling him. There was no point to it – it wasn’t like they didn’t know about ageing.

 

“When’s your train leaving again?”

 

“In three and a half hours?”

 

Liam looked up, subconsciously rubbing his hairline. It had been receding very slightly for a few years now. “God, go sleep for another hour, then.”

Danielle just shrugged and took a sip of Liam’s milk. “Skim?”

“No.” Of course not. Liam believed in regular work-out and not cutting down on his diet. “I did the groceries yesterday.”

“But did you get skim?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Why are you up, then?”

 

Liam looked up at her from a football report and frowned. He looked tired, Danielle noted. His lips pressed together, eyes downcast. “Don’t know, couldn’t sleep anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since now?”

God, this wasn’t going anywhere. She hated it when Liam was like that – so distant, maybe even annoyed. It was so unlike the usual him that it unnerved her every time even after six years of marriage. A quick look told her that he still hadn’t snapped out of it, all tense shoulders and set jaw. 

 

“What is it, Liam?”

“What’s what?”

“You’re all… grumpy.”

 

Silence.

 

There had been a phase where Danielle had believed it to be over. She’d been busy cramming her head with econometrics and diminishing marginal utility, and he had been… like this. There had been fights that scared her roommates to death and periods of ice-cold ignoring, and who knew that the two of them, the sweet, loving, model-couple could be so damn vicious?

 

They fixed it, of course they did. They fixed it by getting engaged.

 

“D’you want breakfast?” Liam was looking at her across the table, and the scrunch of his forehead told her that he was sorry for the failed start of the day.

“Yes.” Danielle made herself smile a little. “You can make that fancy egg and bacon thing.”

“No tofu? Soy milke?” Now he was teasing, just softly, but it triggered something inside her, sparked irritation. So what if she wanted to weigh a few pounds less? So what if he was just as buff as ten years ago?

“I work, you know.”

 

It was out before she could bite her tongue and stop herself.

 

Liam stilled and raised his eyebrows. He was half-way to the kitchen, empty glass in hand, soft jogging pants slung low on his narrow hips. He looked so much younger than she felt from this angle that it infuriated her even more. Then he was moving again, turning to rinse his glass and opening the freezer for the goddamned fat and carbs. 

 

“Get out the tofu, then.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“God, just hand me the damn – “

“Do it yourself.”

 

Liam was suddenly raising his voice, standing up a head taller, lips thin: “Of course you work, Dani. So do I.” And with a slap he took out a pack of bacon strips and banged them into the waiting frying pan. “And I cook, I clean, I sort your fashion magazines – “

“Oh stop it, you sound like some underappreciated housewife.”

“Do I really?”

 

Danielle took a deep breath and backed out of the kitchen, the coffee mug she was clutching pressed to her chest. This was a proper disaster. And she had to catch her train to Leeds in… two hours already! She made her way to the bathroom and ran a quick shower before getting to painting on a face.

She had always loved makeup. All the fun colors, the lining and blending, transforming a face. Now she had the expensive products she had always craved, but the passion for a luxurious bronzed smoky eye, or whatever it was that she had wanted to do with the pricey palettes, had died out.

 

She smudged herself with half a bottle of Chanel lumiére what’s-it’s-name glitter and then just went with something she decided to call the nude look. Today not only her husband but all of her lip-glosses and highlighters were trying to be a bitch.

She viciously chose her best bag along with her traveling items, even though none of it matched. After a while she just gave up color-coordinating and tossed everything around as they went.

 

It was like the old Danielle and the present Danielle were fighting for domination in her body. Old Danielle wanted to just put on something bright pink and call in Liam to apologize and have him help with packing-up. The present Danielle closed the door and tried retrieving half of the glitter powder on her carpet while still aching from the verbal blow.

 

At a quarter to ten she was completely worn out but ready to go. The day had barely started.

 

There had been times before when she had been so overworked she couldn’t even read the numbers on the remote control. But Liam had been there, massaged her shoulders, cooked her dinner and uncorked her favorite red. There had been soothing words and tipsy declarations of undying love in bed that had them both laughing.

Right now he probably wouldn’t even get up to see her to the door. 

 

Though that was exactly where he was when she came out tugging her traveling case behind.

 

He was dressed in work-out clothes, a baggy old T-shirt that was probably as old as their relationship.

They playfully argued a lot about how they actually met. Liam always went on about that lad Jamie introducing them in that pub and then the bowling alley and then the movie. Classic. But Danielle knew better. Liam only remembered the pub better because some important football match had been on, the Wolves playing in a round of the FA Cup or something along those lines. 

 

They had first met three and a half weeks before that night.

 

Danielle could still recall the cold morning light tracing her sleep-worn face, her lungs attacked by the raindrop-tainted air. She had blinked and he had jogged by, young and golden-brown, all dimpled smiles, wearing that very T-shirt and greeting her with a breathless gasp.

Greeted her even though they were technically complete strangers.

 

She stepped closer and felt the years they’d spent together buzzing through the air, a whiff of sunshine and lazy mornings in bed, talking of everything and nothing. “Hey there.” Her voice felt croaky.

“Hey.” Liam stepped forward and then her face was buried against his chest. They had mastered the art of hugging, they were the hug-champions. It just all fell into place, slotted together perfectly when Liam had his arms around her.

 

“Listen. I’m sorry, alright?”

“No, I am.”

They both cringed at that. Then Danielle reached up and kissed him. Maybe she had been absent a little too much, and he really had been tackling all the household chores on his own. Maybe she’d been speaking a lot about work and a lot less about how he was doing.

“So, what are you doing the rest of the day?”

 

A period of silence followed, in which they breathed in and out, in and out, with the clock ticking behind their backs. Then Liam loosened the embrace.

 

“Nothing, really.”

 

 

\-------  
\------  
\-----  
I have squandered my resistance  
For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises  
All lies and jests  
Still a man hears what he wants to hear  
And disregards the rest

\- The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel


	12. Clothes

Zayn woke up at a quarter past three in the morning.

 

He dozed in and out of consciousness, mind darting between things that had happened (The kiss, the coffee mug, dark red soup) and things that might (Liam pressed up against him, early morning suns, smiles across the room). He made it all the way through until half past eight, when Perrie slammed the front door and dragged her luggage noisily through the front yard.

 

They had, yet again, spent the night in separate rooms and avoided talking.

 

Zayn put on the television and watched four hours of endless news reruns, fretting silently, immobile, frozen on the spot. It reminded him of his first casting for some spring runway show, with all the models lined up and a team of so-called experts evaluating. He had felt more uncomfortable than ever when the editor-in-chief lady tapped her pen against his jaw and told everyone it was too much drama, they needed some clean, fresh faces, but he hadn’t budged.

Maybe his silence had worked for once, because they booked him anyway.

 

Now he was sitting around, awaiting yet another judgment to be made. Did Liam want him? Did he want him in his show? In his silly, pink, flowery designer pieces? Would they book him again? It took him some time to realize he had fallen asleep, and that his muddled brain had mixed everything up. He tried to imagine Liam as a designer and couldn’t help but snort – he would bring in the good old worker’s overall, in varying blue, orange and fashionable light grey.

Then again, it wasn’t all that ridiculous when he thought about the things people had made him wear during his career. Nothing wrong with a little working class charm.

 

He was so deeply immersed in his weird web of thoughts that he completely missed the electronic tune playing from the doorway downstairs. It took him another minute to realize it was the new doorbell and yet another to jump up and sprint down the stairs.

He halted while walking past the large, framed mirror, scrutinizing himself. His hair was messed up, but he had stopped caring about that quite some time ago. He was still wearing shorts and the soft T-shirt. His jaw was stubbly.

It was obvious he was far from his prime – but within all the tired sleaziness he could sense that he was still desirable. That people on the streets looked at him and thought that unkempt hair and characterless black T-shirts were his style. He sucked in a deep breath and opened the door before he could overthink yet again.

 

The sudden brightness reminded him that he hadn’t left the house since his last shift. The air smelled of dry grass, proving that the gardener Zayn never cared about had just been by. The traces of Perrie’s luggage went all the way down the pebbled path. Zayn made his eyes focus and walked towards the gate, barefoot. He could see the outlines of Liam through the high fence, and for a moment he felt like pausing and just taking in.

 

The lines and shades.

 

He didn’t know when he’d started thinking in paintings and sketches, but his brain snapshot the image immediately and put it into a little corner in his mind, filled with soft colors and sharp brush strokes. That little corner comforted him, sometimes without him realizing. Maybe it showed him that he was good for something, since he had never been particularly talented at anything at all – modeling didn’t count. If society suddenly deemed wrinkly, old, cranky Ukrainian men the new trend, Mr. Pavelyuchenko could go model right away. People liked the way Zayn’s face looked – that wasn’t really any of his doing.

 

Zayn shook his head and opened the gate with the press of a few buttons. He never quite understood why they had such tight security for the house – what were they trying to protect, anyway? Zayn’s virtue?

He once again tried to shake off the endless thoughts clouding his brain. Liam was here, right here. Zayn didn’t sleep half the night because he thought so much about the what-ifs and the color of Liam’s orbs.

 

“Hey.”

 

And even though he spent most of his time, awake and asleep, thinking about him, Zayn couldn’t bring himself to look up. He focused on the worn out sneakers instead, the sweat cooling on Liam’s legs, the way one side of his jogging shorts was tugged up higher than the other.

“Hey.”

 

“I… I brought a few things. I thought we could make pancakes.”

 

Zayn almost laughed out loud at that. They were supposed to be having an affair, fucking like rabbits, dark and burning, too much angst and want to function. A whole lot of hurt. And now Liam jogged along, with a bag full of flour and eggs and a soft smile. He realized he had looked up somewhere in between and was staring rather rudely when his eyes involuntarily traced the crinkles around those eyes

“Uh, sure. Did you eat, yet?”

“Nah, I haven’t such an appetite after a rough night.”

“I don’t really cook. You?”

“All the time.”

 

Strangely enough, they managed to produce a bowl full of batter without being awkward. No one mentioned the heated kisses in the Starbucks staff’s room, or the fact that both their spouses were in another city, in a conference, and that beneath the friendly banter, they were both hungry for it.

The pan made sizzling noises while Liam talked about his workout routine and Zayn searched the cupboards for cinnamon powder and maple syrup. He found a box of relatively fresh strawberries in the freezer and a pack of old chocolate sprinkles so they added those too.

It tasted better than most things Zayn had eaten lately. This, and the purple soup – he couldn’t decide which reminded him more of moments like this. Liam sat on the other side of the table, working his knife and fork, chewing, inspecting a random strawberry for brown spots.

 

“Man United is playing in an hour.”

“I’ve Sky.”

“The fancy stuff. I always go out for games.”

“’S good I’m married wealthy.”

 

Liam actually laughed at that self-deprecating joke. They used the spare hour to wander through the house, with Liam wondering how big the place was and Zayn avoiding his room. They were acting like proper mates now, having Liam walk in on two huge paintings of himself probably wasn’t the best thing to aid the easy air passing between them.

Liam stopped at Zayn’s and Perrie’s combined closet and admired the size of it. “That’s the size of our kitchen.” and, “You’ve more shoes than my wife!”. Most of all: “Do you actually wear that?”

Zayn just shrugged, he barely ever threw away anything, and he liked shopping. A small part of him burned in a shameful fire at Liam seeing these parts of his life, but the rest just remained still and waited. He watched Liam pull out a particularly frilly, peachy blouse with padding on the shoulders. It had been part of an outfit he’d worn for one of his last shows, and he’d stumbled home, or rather to Perrie’s hotel room in a coked-up haze.

 

He had kept it out of no particular reason, maybe to punish himself for being a fuck-up and a miserable tosser.

 

Liam was holding it to himself, grinning. “I might fancy this one for work.”

“Wait till you see the beige pants that go with it.”

And before Zayn could yet again overthink or let the ashamed part of himself take over, they were both laughing. They plucked a few other items out of the closet and put together some awful outfits, Zayn naming all the possible designers. “Vivian Westwood. One crazy bitch.”, or: “That’s a classic Dior.”

Liam had a particular talent of putting together things that fit the least, and before they knew it, half the clothes Zayn owned were strewn across the room. Meaning it was practically covered.

 

“You should sell them.”

 

They both sat down, tired with making fun of high fashion so thoroughly. Liam was toying with the sleeve of a silk tiger shirt, scrunching up his forehead. “You know, I bet people would buy them off you. On eBay or something.”

“Oh.” Zayn picked up the few Ed Hardy ties that were covering his chest. “You think so?”

“Yeah, so you have sort of a separate account. Danielle and I have our own savings, too.” He immediately looked like he regretted opening his mouth. Zayn lowered his eyes, pulling up a bright yellow poncho, trying to fold it. For a second right there, he had stopped caring about circumstances.

And so had Liam, apparently.

 

To keep the heaviness out of the room, Zayn turned on the telly and flipped through all the pay TV channels, settling with the pre-game analysis. They watched clips of training matches and brief interviews with players passing through. Zayn, despite his usual interest in the game, couldn’t help but glance sideways every other second.

Liam was folding the clothes on his own accord now, hands in a settled rhythm, eyes focusing on the big flat screen. He caught Zayn’s eye halfway through a pair of tight, lime-green trousers.

 

They both stilled.

 

Or maybe everything else did. The voices of analysts and team managers retreated into a buzzing sound in the background, the yellow sun streaming through the curtains a set painting of light. Zayn didn’t know how long they just sat like that, with the TV on and the designer explosion surrounding them.

Then Liam reached out and Zayn leaned in, hands searching through the garments: gloss, leather, suede, silk, until he found the heat of Liam’s thigh. Their lips met again, in a sort of trance, in a mere split-second.

Zayn knew how to have sex. He knew where to put his hands and what gadgets to bring, which spots to suck, what to moan. Except he didn’t know anything. Not now, not with Liam touching his side tentatively, with his mouth moving against the side of his neck.

 

He could hear the match starting, the whistle blown and the noise of the crowd.

 

Then they were both tearing at their clothes, adding them to the piles and piles of Zayn’s past. He spread his legs in a feverish attempt to grant Liam more space while tugging off his T-shirt. Liam’s eyes were fixed on Zayn’s lips, or his chin, his jaw? “Oh, God.”

Liam was gripping his hips like a drowning man, gulping down air. Zayn thought about reaching for the remote control and turning off the TV. But he couldn’t bring himself to take his hands off the broad planes of Liam’s back, or push off the pressure on top of him. The warmth. The fast, wild beat of his heart.

 

“I honestly. I don’t. Actually. No.” Liam pushed himself up on his elbows, put a fifteen centimeters distance between their faces. “God, this is bloody awful.”

He crashed back down again, face pressing into Perrie’s pillow, knocking the air out of Zayn’s lungs.

 

The commentator bemoaned a missed chance by Vidić, the crowd at Old Trafford boiled.

 

“I think the game’s good.” Zayn pressed out. He reached a hand up and after a moment of hesitation, let it glide through Liam’s hair. It was soft and a little dry to the touch – typically man, didn’t use conditioner or anything. “That Japanese fellow’s doing shite, though.”

“Kagawa. We got him off some German club.” Liam mumbled. Then he rolled over, kicking away one or two spiky tank-tops. “He’s still young.”

“He won’t be for long.”

“Are you always this pessimistic?”

“Yeah.”

 

Zayn sat up against the wall, watching the defeated look that had Liam frowning. That short moment in which they both knew what they wanted – it had been exactly that, short. What was it that had him holding back? If it were up to Zayn, he would already be lubed up and shoved into, maybe already going for round two. Then he asked himself how many people Liam had been with in his entire life. He had been married for quite some time now, obviously, and before that? He couldn’t imagine him just fucking around.

“Like, how many people have you actually…” Zayn heard himself ask before he could muffle the rest of the question with an ugly fur hat. “Sorry.”

 

“God.” Liam sighed. “You probably think I’m a proper idiot right now.”

 

Zayn shook his head, almost too vigorously. Then he slipped back down to lie next to Liam, the back of their hands touching very, very slightly.

“Uh, well. Five or six?” Liam bit his lip. “I… got engaged very early.” And of course he had been faithful all along. The thought made a specific part of Zayn’s chest hurt with a stinging sensation – he realized that it was jealousy. Though there really was no way he was the resentful one, because it had been just five or six people that had had Liam before him, while Zayn had slept with… no idea.

 

Maybe it was merely the fact that all of those six people had held a large spot in Liam’s heart. Because Liam wasn’t the sort of person to fuck just for the sake of having sex.

 

“What about you?”

 

Zayn stayed still for a moment. The he got up and shoved away the sleeves of a white Armani suit, ignoring Liam’s question. Instead, he ran his fingers along his sharp hipbones, toying with the waistband of his boxers before pulling them down. He heard the sharp intake of a breath and the rhythmic clapping of the supports, booing and whistling in between.

Then he licked up the length of Liam’s cock, twirling his tongue. He wasn’t going to tell Liam about all the faceless, nameless people he had slept with, but he was going to use the skills he had acquired and suck his cock.

 

“Suck his brains out.”

 

He almost smiled at that, cheeks hollowing to go harder. The interesting thing was, Liam hadn’t at all judged him. He’d cooked and made fun of Zayn’s closet, kissed him and watched football, but there wasn’t ever the second in which Zayn thought: “Yes, he wants me.” or, “No he doesn’t.”

 

Instead, he gave head and put it on an imaginary list of things that mattered to him.

 

Liam came with a quiet gasp, hands pushing Zayn’s head into his crotch with a rather brute force. His hips pressed up and for a second, there was no room to breathe or make a sound. Then Zayn was pulled up and a big, warm hand rested against his cheek, wiping away something, and he was fiercely apologized to.

 

“It’s okay, man. It’s okay.” Zayn sort of wanted to tell Liam that he’d had far worse blow jobs, but he somehow felt a barrier between his past partners and this man right here. Maybe because they didn’t hold any meaning at all, and Liam held too much already.

“I’m sorry.” Liam repeated. Then his eyes flicked to the screen and he broke out into half a grin. “Scored! Rio scored!”

Zayn turned to the TV as well, swallowing a few times to rid of the slimy feeling in his throat, but he felt himself smiling as well. He had probably smiled more this afternoon than the entire last year.

 

It was nearly half time.

 

They had gone and eaten the rest of the edible food in the freezer and were back in bed again when Liam spoke up. “You’ll have to teach me a few things, I guess.”

Zayn lay where he was, his ankle touching Liam’s muscled calf. “Teach you?”

“It wasn’t five or six people. It was just three.” Liam laughed at Zayn’s expression. “Really. I was with Jenny for three years, starting at fifteen. She had a purity ring and everything, so. Yeah. And then Mernie in college, she moved away after six months? I met Danielle right after that.”

Zayn swallowed again. He could still taste Liam at the back of his throat. “So you, like, never had anything with men.”

“No, not really.”

“Except just now.”

“Right you are.”

 

Zayn turned sideways and moved closer until he could rest his nose in the crook of Liam’s neck. “That’s fine with me.”

“I kissed five or six people, though.” Liam bit down on his lip while Zayn felt the start of laughter building up in his chest.

 

“Seven, now.”


	13. In which Liam scores and flies (high up, high)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: (Or something like that) There actually is explicit sexual intercourse in this chapter. Kudos, chaps.

By Thursday, Liam still hadn’t come off his high.

 

He felt like some cheesy movie character reliving their teenage years, but he wasn’t even ashamed enough to stop. He thought about Zayn and the blowjob and the blowjob and Zayn and his lips and the curve of his neck and then the blowjob, again. He was a sexually active, happily married man. Still nothing matched the excitement he had felt when his fingers laced through the soft hair on the back of Zayn’s head and guided him up and down, up and down.

 

Actually, the more he thought about it, the better it became. By tea time, his mind had officially decided that the blowjob was probably the extreme of any sexual arousal men could achieve. The Himalaya of oral sex.

And he hadn’t seen Zayn for four days now.

 

Of course there had been the odd text message, and a phone call in which Zayn told him that he had set up an eBay account and immediately sold two Lagerfelds and a ridiculous fedora by Stéphane Rolland. He was now apparently busy categorizing his enormous closet and researching prices and brands.

“Even the way out of that fashion shit-hole is painful.” He had said down the phone. Liam had laughed at that while Danielle threw him her raised-eye-brows look across the kitchen. 

She had come home and to find everything neatly in place and Liam whisking away at some cream and boiling broccoli. They spent the night cuddled up with a bottle of wine and soft, murmured conversation.

 

Of course Liam knew he was damned to hell. Of course he knew the guilt should be eating him alive and that his actions made him an irresponsible git of a person, but as of right now… he was still too high on Zayn and his eye lashes and his mouth stretched around his cock and. God.

A small, nagging part in his brain told him that the consequences he’d have to face in time to come would be hurtful, or more than that. Much worse. Perhaps devastating. But every single endorphin inside his body sang with the thrill of the wrecking sex and the heated kisses, Zayn trailing his tongue along the shell of Liam’s ear and smiling into the crook of his neck.

 

So that’s how he went on being normal and loving to Danielle, going to work, taking engine parts apart, while his brain was really very much stuck in that second where Zayn hollowed his cheeks and the delicious friction rippled through him like an electric bolt.

It went so far that when he received a picture from Zayn with all the organized racks, he went and pleaded with Niall for a shift change.

 

“Mate, pretty short notice, huh?” Niall wiped the sweat from his brow while proceeding to the next box, inspecting the packed up turbine blades for their new combustion engines. “What for?”

“I’ve a friend to meet.” Liam found himself lying easily, and it made his stomach jolt. As a child he hadn’t even been able to lie about the amount of candy he had eaten. “C’mon, man. I’ll owe you one.”

“Fine, but pints are on you next.”

“Will do.” And Liam just loved how Niall took the whole thing without further questions. He just genuinely wasn’t the type of person to be nosy or suspicious.

 

That’s how Liam ended up texting Zayn and finishing his working day two and a half hours earlier than planned. He drove too fast and caught a parking space just in front of the Starbucks shop.

Inside people were cueing up for their coffee, the place bustling with chatter and the whisking sounds of the coffee machines. Zayn was still busy mixing something, his glasses gliding off the bridge of his nose while he nodded towards Liam and mouthed ‘give me five’.

Liam absolutely couldn’t take his eyes off him.

 

He made to stand by the door and then decided to just wait by one of the benches. Zayn was scribbling names on paper cups and nodding at a pair of giggling girls. Liam couldn’t blame them, he looked downright gorgeous, once again. As usual.

 

“Who are you staring at?”

 

Liam jolted out of his silent appreciation and looked around to find a boy standing a few paces away, by the backseat door of a big, glossy black car. It took him a few minutes to recognize the big blue eyes beneath the honey colored fringe and he opened his mouth in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Louis made a small snorting noise and mumbled something decidedly French under his breath. “My father works in that shiny building over there. As does your wife.” He huffed and pulled on his uniform jacket, “my driver is getting me vanilla chocolate.”

“Hazelnut is better, actually.” Liam found himself saying, before he pinched himself inwardly. Actually responding to this weird mature kid wasn’t the best tactic in getting him to shut up. “Never mind.”

But Louis didn’t seem too nonplussed, he came forth a few steps forward before sitting down on the bench carefully. “So who was it you were staring at?”

Liam turned away, eyes catching Zayn again. He was handing keys to a co-worker, already shrugging out of his apron. “Are you supposed to sit on public benches? Shouldn’t your nanny put on some silk cloth beforehand?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Louis sat straighter demonstratively. “First of all, she isn’t my nanny. I don’t have a nanny, because I don’t need one.” He scrunched up his nose in disgust, “then, you should perhaps tell me about your affair with Perrie Edward’s husband.”

Liam didn’t respond for the longest time, before his brain got through to the core message and his insides turned cold. He slowly, maybe even hesitantly turned around to return Louis’ steady gaze.

 

People walked on by, a bus with an ad for shampoo passed. Then Louis patted him with a small, slender hand and grinned. “So I was right. Don’t feel bad, though. My daddy also has affairs. I think practically everyone in their right mind does.”

“Louis. I… honestly, I don’t.” Liam swore at himself silently. How come he could lie to Niall just fine but couldn’t tell this little brat to shut his mouth about things he didn’t understand? “Fuck’s sake.”

“My daddy sleeps with Jennifer Rogan. I researched her, you see. Might be useful one day.”

“God, did you… you didn’t tell your mum, did you?”

“Do I look stupid to you? Because I’m beginning to think I do.”

“God, no. You just look like a child. You are a child.” 

“I won’t be in a few years.” Louis watched him for a few seconds. “I won’t tell anybody. I mean, what good does it do?”

“You’re saving it up for later.” Liam said, a sarcasm only this particular brat brought out in him dripping from his words.

“Well, yes.” Louis smirked. Then he batted his eyelashes at Liam and extended a hand clumsily. “Nice to meet you again, Mr. Payne. My chocolate’s ready.”

And off he went, with the big guy of a driver holding a steaming cup and eyeing Liam suspiciously. A few moments later the big glossy car was already half way down the road.

 

“Was that kid talkin’ t’you?” Zayn was jogging towards him, hair tousled, with a little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. And snap, Liam’s worries were wiped away just like that. He felt like reaching out and pulling him into a hug, or clashing their lips together and pushing Zayn onto his knees for some more of that glorious head – “Uh. Let’s go, yeah?”

They spent the ride to the Edward’s house talking randomly, Liam desperate in his attempts to look at Zayn and the road at the same time. He parked a few streets away, not because of precautions and sneakiness, but because he just simply didn’t want to waste any more time he had left. They managed to get into the house just fine before he was already clutching Zayn and kissing him like a drowning man.

 

“Woah,” Zayn managed to say before they were already tumbling through the living room, falling backwards onto the couch, distributing clothes everywhere. It was so much like the clichéd affair stereotype that Liam couldn’t help but laugh a few times, but he was mainly hard and between every second thought he managed, images of Zayn with his eyes half-lid and his mouth full interrupted.

 

He had always acknowledged attractive men.

 

But never had he seen one with such a sexual abandon. God, he genuinely wasn’t someone unable of controlling his urges – he had stuck to his girlfriends, or his studies, or whatever the hell else he had done all his life. But sex just really hadn’t been a main part. First there came affection, mutual respect, common interests, and a few other things that made lads snort at Liam for being pussy-whipped.

But that just simply was how he did things.

 

Until now, that is.

 

Liam groaned while Zayn slid up his shirt with one hand and shoved down his pants with the other. He tried to keep from panting out loud and struggled out of his shoes, heat flaring in his stomach when Zayn finally got a hold of his cock and immediately squeezed tight.

“God, shouldn’t we… you know, go upstairs? Oh.”

“We really shouldn’t.” Zayn was standing up, shrugging out of his button-downs, all smooth, bronzed chest and slim waist-line. Then he was stepping out of his jeans and lying down while pulling Liam on top of him in one swift motion. His hand hanging off the couch was fumbling with something, and his eyes seemed even darker than usual. “Fuck, fuck it.”

Liam couldn’t decide where to look first, his eyes trailing up and down, hands following suit. Before he could start doubting himself, he leaned down and pressed a kiss against that open throat, sucking at the warm skin, dragging along with his teeth. He could feel Zayn shuddering despite their heated bodies, and it made him almost dizzy with need.

 

“Fuck.” Zayn swore again. Then he sat up, pushing against Liam’s chest, their crotches rubbing together. “Maybe we do need to go up.”

Liam sighed a little. He started clambering off Zayn, no quite willing to let the skin contact falter. He was kissed square on the mouth again, and he actually heard Zayn chuckle while they stumbled their way up the stairs, making out like a pair of over-eager teenagers.

“The second time today I’ve compared myself to a teen.” Liam said out loud, going back to the bruise he’d sucked earlier on, “Hmm.”

Zayn sounded breathless with his next chuckle: “That a good thing?”

“Dunno?”

 

They fell twice before making it to the bed, landing, once again, in stacks of designer clothes. Zayn swept them off without a second thought, reaching to the night table and roaming through a few items. “There, fuckin’ finally.”

Then Zayn was pulling off his shorts, erection springing free, and tossing Liam a bottle. It took him a few moments to realize what it was, and for a second the thought scared him – before his eyes darted back to the slender curve of Zayn’s arse and suddenly he couldn’t even wait to step out of his pants properly. The heat in his chest had risen so high he thought he could feel his ears burning up.

 

He squeezed a glob of the cool stuff on his palm and flopped down besides Zayn, who was spreading his thighs and reaching up to tug Liam in for another kiss. The gel stuff got everywhere, the covers, Zayn’s chin, and for some reason, Liam’s hair – but he still managed to balance himself, hand gliding over Zayn’s cock, sprawling over the inside of his knee, and the crawling up to press in on the heat.

He had done it with women before, pleasuring them just with his hands. This wasn’t so different, except it was. Zayn hitched a breath when he pushed in a second finger perhaps a little too hurriedly, but he seemed experienced enough to not tense up too much.

 

The thought had occurred to Liam before, of course it had. The way he looked and smelled and felt, Zayn must’ve had lovers and admirers by the truckload. And even though that blowjob really had been beyond all he’d ever experienced, Liam had caught on the way Zayn had dodged his question of how many. He had probably lost count, that was how many there were.

Liam suddenly felt the need to prove himself, to live up to all the other people who had had Zayn before. He wanted to blow his mind, wanted to perform. He had already started before the grain on rationality left in his head could tell him how utterly stupid he was being.

“Holy fuck.” Zayn moved his hips up to meet the third finger Liam was now burying inside him, lips parted, eyes closed. “Oh. Oh, God.”

Liam made himself halt and then moved his fingers in a little twist, finding the spot that made Zayn jump and moan. He kept pressing until he was sure he remembered, and then pushed himself up until the tip of his cock was nudging against the stretched hole.

“Do it already.” Zayn had thrown a leg over Liam’s shoulder, all expertly, and frowned at him. The impatience almost made him look adorable. Liam pushed a little, so that the tip went in, and then pulled out again.

“What was that for?”

“I’m new at this, remember?”

“Fuck new, you’re bloody teasing me.”

And before Liam could react any further, Zayn had already lifted his hips again and guided his cock into place before slamming up. They both screamed at that.

 

Liam had probably never felt such a level of tightness and heat pressing down on him at once before. His mind went blank for a few moments and he could actually hear a weird ringing sound resonating in his ears.

It was probably a couple hundred times more intense than all the other sex he’d ever had in his life until now, and Zayn was pressing up again, fucking himself on Liam’s cock and the thought alone made the pleasure grow into a tenfold. Zayn was gorgeous, and Liam had probably thought this line so often he should be looking for new vocabulary now, but it was true. With the sweat beading on his temples and his eyes half-lid, he looked out of some unreal porno. Something you wanked yourself raw over, not something you actually touched.

Liam realized he was being completely still when Zayn bucked up and moaned deep and guttural, probably hitting the spot Liam had tried to memorize beforehand.

 

It set him off like a canon. Liam couldn’t even control the snap of his hips, the way his fists tightened around whatever they happened to be holding. Before he could try and memorize anything, his orgasm was already washing over him, and he didn’t hear or see anything for a small eternity.

 

“So that’s sorted.”

Liam had to make himself focus. “What?”

“Ya bloody git, acting all virginal.”

“They told me I always try to do my best!”

“Well, ta.”

 

Liam started laughing, he couldn’t really stop himself. “Do you always sound proper northern after sex?”

“What?” Zayn sat up and reached for a box of tissues. He stopped short in his tracks when Liam didn’t stop smiling. “I guess.” And then he was leaning down, pressing his lips to the corner of Liam’s mouth, but the desperate edge was gone, and it almost felt soft.

 

They were jerked apart when Liam’s phone rang. It turned out to be Mrs. Pavelyuchenko asking for another visit, but the clock was ticking away and Liam had to be home by six. Zayn helped him straighten up, checking for spills or scratches.

Everything tensed, and Liam couldn’t help but yearn for another day free of responsibilities and places to be. Just him and Zayn and football and more sex. They didn’t touch for the rest of the walk to the door, but Liam remained on the spot while the front gate closed in a silent glide.

 

He let his eyes follow Zayn’s retreating back, tracing over the slight bruise on his hip.


	14. Flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, my friends, is where the Zarry comes in.

It had taken Zayn quite some time to start enjoying anal sex.

 

His first time was a typical drunken fumble-jumble at the back of someone’s everything but spacious car. The guy whose name he had conveniently forgot had smelled of beer and probably the pizza they had ordered at the party they had been to. God, it hadn’t even been that painful.

 

Just, plain awkward.

 

He had to give Harry all the credit on that one, for sure. After their third or so class-ditching-coffee-sipping session, he had very casually suggested to go back to his shabby student lodging and take a look at his collection of cactuses. It turned out that there weren’t any cactuses, and that referring to random plants was just Harry’s way of saying that he was horny and Zayn was accessible, attractive and very possibly willing.

It turned out he really was. They spent two and a half years looking at tulips, watering daisies, and ridiculously enough, cherry blossoms, until Zayn’s pretty face was discovered and he moved down to London.

 

Now that they were both old, nearing their thirties, they liked to refer to that particular episode as their very personal flower power time.

Zayn didn’t know where Harry had gotten all his knowledge, but the lad sure knew how to make him come. And come. And come. The easy thing was, that since Harry had decided to forgo all the fidgety, blushing phases and just drop to his knees and put his lips around Zayn’s cock, there really wasn’t any reason to hold back anymore. 

 

They had both dated, or half-dated during that period of time, but the sex had been a permanent sort of fixture in their lives.

 

They both worked that way.

 

It hadn’t stopped raining for a week now, and Zayn was basking in grey colors and dragging ragged lines across his new canvas to recreate a rain more soft and forgiving. Liam and him had arranged their schedules around each other so that they could meet up twice a week – Tuesday with Liam’s shift ending early and Danielle not knowing, he came over to Zayn’s and they went at it like rabbits and then some. Friday, Liam would jog by the Starbucks shop and accompany Zayn on his late shift. They mostly just made out in the staffs room on those days.

 

It was pathetic, but Zayn felt like he lived for those days.

 

Even if their affair was solidly incorporated into regular life now, he just simply couldn’t get used to the way Liam’s breath felt against the crook of his neck, or the way he would alter between being soft and caring, almost a bit scared of doing something wrong, and just ruthlessly sex-crazed. He also couldn’t get used to the way they acted like proper mates whenever Liam wasn’t balls deep inside him.

 

Because of course they were more than just friends. But in a way, not really.

 

Zayn had tried to compare his relationship with Liam to the flower power time in university.

Theoretically, it was just the same thing – they hung out and watched the football, they met up just for a chat and they talked of random things that concerned them (the lack of proper coffee) or their past (summer sports camp and running track). On Tuesdays they would stumble through half of Perrie’s house like drunk and scatter half their clothes on the way to the bedroom, where Liam would pound him into the mattress or up against the wall, or perhaps against the inside of Zayn’s increasingly emptier closet.

 

But theory never really applied to anything but itself.

 

Zayn ignored the nagging sensation that burned from his chest all the way down to his stomach whenever Liam got up and left, or skidded back into the room for another kiss, or cancelled with an unnecessarily long text message because Danielle had some sort of gala dinner, or she had taken her afternoon off for some quality husband-time.

 

The difference between flower-fucking around with Harry and sleeping with Liam was that Zayn didn’t walk his way through half the town just to see Harry and then turn around again. He also didn’t spend half his nights sleepless and weary, thinking and re-thinking everything and anything about Harry. He absolutely didn’t have by now three paintings of Harry tugged away in his room.

 

It took until that afternoon, with the typical English rain driving and the grey paint smudged across his cheek, that he threw a quick look around the room and his eyes caught contours of Liam he had so carefully lined out himself, bathed in sunlight and blurred out behind the high fence Perrie had put around her property. Zayn even drew the plastic bag with flour and eggs to the very last detail. Then his eyes skidded to Liam with his cap on behind the tall glass door, the Starbucks logo separating them, fogged with rain. He had painted with such care, built in the details and dotted on the colors.

 

In that moment, Zayn couldn’t have lied to anyone, let alone himself.

 

Sitting there, covered in greys and still half-tangled in his thoughts, Zayn couldn’t take his eyes off the Liams he had mapped out.

 

And that was that.

 

“Why are you asking me this?” Harry whispered across the table at their dinner date later that evening with Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko at the Italian nobody liked. “Mate, I know you, alright? You already know the answer.”

They had all ordered the mushroom risotto, the only remotely tolerable thing on the menu. Mr. Pavelyuchenko had taken to guessing the nationality of the cook, and decided by the taste of the food that he was definitely English.

“But Jamie Oliver is good cook, yes?” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko asked. “He on TV premium television cook show.”

“Is no good.” Her husband retorted.

“No good.” Harry chimed in while moving his glass of fake grape juice wine a few inches from the edge of the table. “Why d’you always ask me about these things?”

“Dunno.” Zayn steadied Mrs. Pavelyuchenko and gave her a smile. “Jamie Oliver is awesome.”

“Vitaly, you hear this? Zyénovovich say Jamie Oliver is premium television cook.”

“Jamie Oliver is better than this English men in restaurant.”

 

They all agreed on that.

 

“God, that risotto was awful.” Harry had both his hands tucked into the pockets of his retro-leather jacket while Zayn lit himself a cigarette. The old Ukrainian couple was walking ahead of them, arms linked, still arguing about the quality of premium English telly shows.

“Harry, listen.”

“Anything, O friend of mine.”

“I’d… can I see your lavender?”

 

They both stilled for a second, with Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko walking on with a surprisingly high speed. Harry raised his brows: “What?”

“Water lilies.”

“God, you have the try harder than that.”

“Bloody hell, Haz. Roses, alright? Red fuckin’ roses.”

“Fine. Roses.”

 

They hurried to catch up with the pair and made it into the apartment safe and sound. Harry had agreed to take care of the elderly couple (which included enduring longer stays with their good-for-nothing son Mikhail, excessive vodka drinking which he always partook in and a lot of sour bread) and in return he had a rent-free room all to himself for the first time since he graduated, or so he liked to tell Zayn.

They made sure Mr. Pavelyuchenko got his nightly vodka Khortytsa and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko had removed her falsies, as Harry liked to call them affectionately.

 

Once they were alone, Zayn leapt half-way across the room and attacked Harry with a kiss that was perhaps a tad too desperate for either of their liking.

“You want the roses now?” Harry pushed him away, lips uncharacteristically tight. “What about Liam then, won’t you feel so guilt – “

Zayn shut him up with another frenzied kiss. Harry had the bad habit of not giving proper answers when asked and talking when it really wasn’t appreciated. “Hmm, Zaynekins. Face it already.”

 

And the problem wasn’t that Zayn hadn’t faced it. He had looked all three of his paintings straight in the eye and registered the sinking feeling in his stomach. Now he was just desperately trying to reverse things. Things that had happened inside his chest in that blood-pumping organ, poetically speaking. Or much rather in his head, during the many hours he had laid awake, thinking, thinking, clearly over-thinking.

 

Maybe it had happened way earlier. From the second he had laid eyes on Liam, drying his hands in that posh men’s bathroom, watching with curious eyes as Perrie tugged him out to meet more socialites and whatnot.

 

“Blimey, you aren’t even focused on me, are you?” Harry was laughing, but at the same time, his forehead was scrunched up, eyes serious.

Zayn just sighed and then dropped both his hands that were gripping Harry’s bunched up shirt. They rolled over each other for a bit until both of them were settled comfortably and had at least a third of the duvets.

“Still don’t know why the hell you won’t buy that king-sized.”

“I happen to like cuddling, y’know.”

 

Outside the rain had started again, soft against the rooftop, a dripping rhythm. Zayn closed his eyes and recalled the way Liam had ran in the other Tuesday, stripping out of his working clothes, sweaty from the jog and with a bit of engine oil still smudged across his nose. They had fucked right on the kitchen counter and afterwards Liam had pulled up his pants with an apologetic smile and told him he had promised Danielle dinner.

 

“Never knew this could happen to you.” He heard Harry murmur vaguely.

“Dunno.”

“I sort of thought your heart had shriveled and died from all the coke.”

“Thanks, mate.”

“No problem.”

 

They looked at each other for a long, long second, before Zayn leaned in and pressed his lips to Harry’s in a feather light movement. In that moment he thought the thoughts that had passed his mind again and again over the years he had known Harry and fucked up his life – why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he just? Why couldn’t they just be?

 

Whatever it was that they both needed.

 

“Look, Zayn.” And Harry’s eyes were surprisingly bright. “If it was supposed to happen, it should’ve. A long time ago.”

“Yeah, right.” And Zayn had never really wanted it to happen. Not with Harry, not with anyone else. But now it had. “You know I can’t, right?”

“So what? Pulling on my rose petals keeps you grounded? Thanks a ton.”

 

They both had a chuckle at that.

 

But maybe that was exactly what Zayn had wanted to say but had been unable to put into words. Realizing that he was in love wasn’t difficult, it came to him like a build-up, like the gradual color-coatings of those paintings. The difficult part was to know and accept that nothing was going to be returned.

 

Since stopping his Tuesday-Friday and occasionally weekend schedule wasn’t an option at all, Zayn simply started another schedule to keep from drowning in it.

 

“What about those roses?”

“Tulips.”

“Fine, whatever.”

“Let me get the watering can.”

“Just fuck me, Haz.”

 

Though he had very probably already drowned.


	15. In which Liam loses it (whatever it is)

Liam had been raised to be a gentleman.

 

His mum had never hesitated on telling him how he should respect the fairer sex, the more the better, treat them like a sister, or better yet your own mother. That’s very much how ended up lying to all his friends about having shagged Olivia Morten while really he had just carried her all the way home and up the stairs, drunken blabber and vomit flying every each way.

It had been excruciatingly painful to lie to everyone, but he just couldn’t slip his hand under her admittedly very, very short skirt while she was barely half-conscious. It felt wrong to take advantage like that.

 

Fourteen years later, it only occurred to him that he was very much taking advantage of his wife’s career-driven, over-tight schedule two and a half months into his passionate, sex-crazed affair.

 

It hit him the cliché sort of way.

 

After his early shift ended, he drove all the way up to Zayn’s Starbucks and picked him up. They managed to behave like normal people until the front door of that giant mansion closed. Then they fucked in the living room entrance, the staircase and the kitchen. Zayn made them toast and cracked a few beers. They ate between bites and kisses.

When he returned home, completely on time and with nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary, Danielle was already sitting on the couch in her relaxation bath-robe, painting her toe nails, curls wet from a quick shower. She said: “Surprise, home early!” while still looking down, and it just hit him, like the proverbial brick-wall.

 

Maybe it had been the close proximity of the last kiss he shared with Zayn and the moment he laid eyes on his wife’s bare feet – the guilt suddenly took a choking hold of most of his body, a heated wave he hadn’t felt in any moment for the past three months. No, he had been paralyzed and electrified, muddled and blind with a newfound lust, but never had there been any guilt in the violent mixture.

 

Danielle looked oddly young again, sans makeup and dark clothing, all cuddled up in her thick robe, splattering one of her magazines with fuchsia varnish. Liam felt his eyes darting to the shelf where he had put those fashion spreads of Zayn, frenzied, driven by something unknown. Their presence suddenly burdened him, made him sick to the stomach.

 

“Can you put on the kettle? God, I need a good cuppa. Finally got off early for once.” Danielle put down her bottle and inspected her handiwork. Then she glanced up and Liam felt like his insides had just poured out, like Danielle could see all the kisses Zayn had trailed up and down his torso like a fiery imprint.

“Yeah. Sure.” He made himself say before shedding his Jacket and walking straight into the kitchen.

 

What was he doing?

 

He felt like every last thing about him screamed of betrayal. His hair was tousled, his lips looked kissed. Were there any stains? Any marks? He could feel his chest rising and falling rapidly with the paranoia.

 

Always treat a girl with respect. Yeah, right.

 

And Liam couldn’t say he hadn’t. Up until right now.

His hands were shaking while he boiled water and mixed together Danielle’s usual in her favorite mug, and a desperate urge took over to just throw himself to the ground and confess all. To tell her that he truly hadn’t been himself those past few months. That Zayn Edwards, that ex-model devil of a husband had possessed him, that he wasn’t at all homosexual.

 

What? God, what?

 

Liam shook his head and picked up the mug carefully, swallowing repeatedly to calm himself down. This was probably the closest to a heart-attack he had ever been. He gulped down some more air before heading out and placing the mug on the coffee table. “I’m going to run a quick shower, yeah?”

Danielle just nodded. Liam bent down and pressed a hesitant kiss against her temple, but the moist warmth just made him cringe. With disgust? For himself? For her? For Zayn?

 

He made himself stand under ice-cold water for a good ten minutes before switching it to scorching hot. It had him shuddering violently all the way, but it emptied his head, somehow. After a load of soap and a session of scrubbing, he felt clean enough to step back out and sit on the toilet-lid, dripping wet and red with the heat.

 

How come? How could he just live and sleep and bloody make love to Zayn for two months straight, with the seasons passing, the rain growing heavier and the air colder, without ever feeling any of the things that were now wrecking right through him.

His brain somehow managed to hold it all back, until this very moment.

 

He was a married man who loved his wife and had morals. He wasn’t at all gay. He was perfectly able to tell between right and wrong, and most of the time he could follow those guidelines, too.

Now he was none of those things. 

 

He had been infatuated with Zayn. Obsessed, something like that, something completely off.

 

Because he was beautiful, had a lop-sided smile and always paused a moment too long when he looked at Liam. Because Liam couldn’t stop feeling that sharp elbow digging into his sides or those lips caressing the crook of his neck. Because Zayn laughed at things and listened to what Liam had to say, because he was running a successful eBay shop now and because they could just lie back after sex and talk about football.

 

Liam rubbed his hands over his face.

 

He felt cold, even though the bathroom was still steamy and fogged up. He was at the apartment he shared with his wife, with her barely ten meters away, and he still didn’t have the decency to stop thinking about shagging someone else. He was a pathetic excuse of a husband. He really was.

 

Liam grabbed a towel and started rubbing himself dry. Wild thoughts roamed his head and he briefly considered telling the truth again. Then his guts twisted at the mental image of Danielle leaving, their bedroom deserted, her bottles and tubes and palettes all gone, her one-too-many shoes not occupying the entrance space anymore.

So that really wasn’t an option.

 

He got dressed and decided to act like his normal self, be his normal self, the Liam who loved unconditionally and waited up for his super-hero of a wife to return from yet another conference or fiscal meeting. Not the one who sneaked around cleverly, kissed someone else with all the vigor and heart that was supposed to be reserved just for her.

 

“God, took you long enough.” Danielle was just finishing her tea before heading in for the blow-drier. Liam stood at the door, with his hair still wet and the T-shirt askew, and watched her while she shook out her long curls.

“I was thinking about cropping them, y’know.” She said loudly over the noise, glancing his way and letting a small, rare smile play around her lips. “Convenient, and all.”

Liam just nodded.

 

He didn’t know what possessed him after that. Probably the same monster that took hold of him whenever he was near Zayn. But once Danielle was finished, he mumbled a few things about groceries and needing broccoli, before throwing on a coat and heading out into the rainy November night.

He didn’t drive safe, hands clenching the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. All the while Danielle’s little smile replayed in his head and the guilt crushed through all the veins in his body with unstoppable force.

 

He didn’t bother parking a few streets away, just halted his car and jumped out, suddenly set in his mission to make things right, somehow. He pushed the doorbell once too often and before he knew it, the door was opened.

 

Perrie had her eyebrows raised and her blonde hair brushed back. She was still in work clothes, all impeccable make-up and gleaming buttons. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, though. Her stocking feet made Liam’s heart jump in a weird rhythm.

 

“I presume you’re here for Zayn.” She was holding a glass of wine, swirling, eyes oddly detached. And suddenly, Liam felt the embarrassment rise in his throat like bile, mixing together with the guilt, it made him choke for real, this time.

Maybe Perrie had cheated on Zayn, and maybe Liam had disliked her for it, secretly. But he was just as bad, to be honest. He had been so self-righteous, so blind with everything he was doing and ruining. 

 

Liam didn’t get to speak, before Perrie was already directing him towards one of the rooms upstairs. One Liam hadn’t entered yet, as far as he knew. It made his stomach twist that he now almost knew the Edwards house as well as his own.

 

He pushed the door knob and went in before he had to take one more look of Perrie, ignoring the faint feeling in his chest.

 

The room was elegant and nicely furnished, just like all the others, but this one didn’t look quite as polished. Liam stood, taking in the full ash-trays, with packs of cigarettes lying nearby, the unmade bed, the leather jacket thrown over a chair. Most of all, there were paintings lining the wall, on the sofa, propped on tables. Some seemed finished, some didn’t.

 

In between sat Zayn, smudging a stripe of color carefully.

 

He seemed so focused that Liam just wanted to turn away, walk out, leave him be in his little color-splashed world. But Zayn was already turning towards him, eyes widening, dropping his brush.

“Liam? What’s wrong?” He came a few steps closer, and all Liam wanted to do was to reach out and tug him closer, just to know that anything existed at all, that he wasn’t punished with mere illusions, driving him mad. “Did Perrie let you in?”

 

The sound of Perrie’s name made Liam start.

 

Then, the thing, the horrible, horrible thing took possession of him again. He turned and made for the door, feeling a tightness in his chest that made breathing an impossible task.

“Fuck, wait.” Zayn had reached out, caught his hand and held him back. “What the hell happened, Liam?”

Liam tried to collect his thoughts. I just realized that I’m cheating on Danielle, my wife, the woman I married and promised to love for all eternity. I just realized how wrong it is. I just…

 

His eye caught something.

 

It took him a few seconds to realize that he was looking at an uncannily familiar face. Another few to turn and barge out of the door, sprint down the stairs and out of that godforsaken house.

 

He drove to the supermarket and picked up a few random things before going home and finding Danielle tucked up and reading one of her unfinished books. They spoke like normal people and he managed to piece together a stringent thought.

 

He cooked.

 

They ate.

 

He did the washing up.

 

All the while he could see his face, sunlit with raindrops, on that wide canvas.


	16. Beds

Zayn remembered the rare occasions he had been hit with a frenzied clarity.

 

It always resolved in him curling up, not in defeat, but in a sort of dull apathy that drove his mum mad. Once it had been his best mate Selim who had thrown a few awkward punches over something of so little importance that he couldn’t even recall the trigger that had him rubbing his bleeding nose, shrinking away. Then there had been a clichéd drunken tussle between the assistant director and a model over some guy who worked in advertising. Zayn had slept with him only the night prior and gotten the anger-outbursts full force.

 

Cat-scratches and long, Bordeaux-colored nails.

 

Selim had been his friend, and Zayn had been the type of teenager to fret over the opinion of his mates quietly. The drunken tussle led to the first stages of his reputation as a man-eating cock-slut. Back in those days, he had cared enough to be genuinely hurt, though not for very long.

 

To put it metaphorically, Liam had hit him square in the jaw and right in the stomach with his sudden presence and disappearance. The way he had pushed open the door with wide eyes, breathing heavily, soaked from the cold and rain, pale as death. It would’ve been another wonderful picture to paint, if only Zayn could get it out of his dreams.

 

He curled up and didn’t fall asleep for a good forty-eight hours before calling Harry to get him the fuck out of that horrid place. Perrie sat down next to him and chain-smoked the silence that spread out in the room for half the night, but her presence didn’t help. There was something thoroughly understanding about it, but also sneering and desperate. He imagined the soft pressure on his shoulder at dawn as a symbol of connection that ran between them, but an hour later Brody Rogan’s silver Jaguar pulled up at the drive way, spilling pebbles.

 

Harry appeared near noon, smudged in tomato sauce from his brand-new job at the Italian everyone hated, patting Zayn on the back and hoisting him up to get fetch the bus, because obviously they both didn’t own a car.

That’s how he ended up not leaving Harry’s single bed for four days straight, soaking in dread and silent fretfulness, listening to the loud conversation Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko shared a few rooms over. He ate most of the horrible left-over risotto Harry brought home and tried to keep his mind blank.

 

On the third day he called his manager at Starbucks and quit.

 

It was raining outside, crude November rain that left everything miserable and sodden, and he had just realized within his blank mind that he was the epitome of a quitter. Had his ancestors once moved to the US, he surely wouldn’t be living any dream, never mind the American one. Hard work, son, he heard a generic television voice say in his mind and he snorted into the pillow.

He had random flower sex with Harry, smelling the cheap garlic on his white waiter’s collar. It was almost like a miniature vacation from the mess he called his life. 

 

“Are you sure he broke it off?”

 

They were getting high celebrating the festive occasion of Zayn finally deciding to get out of bed, half-sprawling over each other with cushions all over the place and naked limbs tangling. Zayn passed on the spliff and thought to himself that if they were still twenty-one and four months, the scene might’ve been ruggedly beautiful. Now it just felt lax and dire.

“Not sure.” He replied, breathing out the smoke, feeling the gentle burn in his lungs.

“Then why the fucking drama?” Harry stopped him from speaking with a lazy flick of his free hand, voice heavy and even more drawling than usual. “C’mere, man.”

Zayn obliged, crawling towards Harry until their groins pushed together, taking a deep smoke. “Roses again?” He heard himself murmur.

“How ‘bout you just blow me?” Harry pushed a hand through his hair, smoke swirling out of his mouth in soft tufts.

 

Zayn did just that.

 

“Always knew that was your calling.” Harry told him fifteen minutes later, rolling a new spliff, eyes heavy-lidded. “So fuckin’ good at it. D’you reckon his wife found out?”

Zayn thumbed the silver lighter, way too expensive to be an actual purchase. He wondered who Harry had knicked them off. “Dunno.”

“You’ve a thing with your tongue…” Harry mused, arching up to remove a condom wrapper from under his back. He was tan and nicely shaped, Zayn noticed. Like a well-rested person completely at ease and back from an expensive holiday. Harry traveled a lot – or used to, anyway. Now he worked random jobs. Had his illicit affairs with women dressed too well and drunk.

 

“How d’you do it?” 

 

Harry turned his head slowly, tilted back, throat exposed. “Do what?”

Zayn gestured at him, eyes trailing down his torso, dipping into his waistline. Then he thought of Liam, broad and salty over him, and he immediately made his mind go blank. It didn’t work at first, memories, flashy images flowing back in a constant stream, then he forced himself to focus on the rim of Harry’s shorts, just tracing and retracing the patterns.

 

The flow stopped after a few breathless seconds.

 

“I’ve never seen you so…” Harry interrupted his blank train of thoughts with a rough little chuckle. Zayn snapped his head up and frowned, shoulders tensed. Sure he was living with Harry, occupying his bed, but he didn’t want to talk about anything substantial and he had been systematically ignoring Harry’s passing comments. “… so depleted.”

 

Zayn shrugged. Than his blank mind slipped away, out of the window, into the grey, muddled sky, and he saw Liam pushing the door to the Starbucks shop open, shaking the rain from his cap, and he saw him pale and wild-eyed, turning around and leaving.

It was the beginning and the end of something that had brought his pathetic life into movement, and now it was out the window.

 

Or something like that.

 

Harry saved him by tugging him in and kissing him full on the lips. They fucked on the old oriental carpet, with clawing and biting and purposeful thrusts aimed to verge on being painful. That cleared things a little bit.

 

 

Zayn walked his way home after thanking Mrs. Pavelyuchenko for yet another loaf of dark, sour bread. He threw it away once he was around the corner. He couldn’t bear the sight of it.

Ten meters in front of Perrie’s grand house he stopped short. Because there was a car driving by and it was driving too slowly to be anyone else’s but –

 

Zayn felt the impulse to just throw himself to the ground, dodge behind the rows and rows of black, shiny cars, but as always, he just stood. He couldn’t even fucking hide when all his dignity and pride depended on it.

 

Liam was driving very carefully, taking his time, hands tight on the steering wheel. The windows of his old car weren’t nearly as shaded, so Zayn could spot the tenseness of his shoulders. A part of him, a very different part from that one that had dodged, wanted to wave and scream and theatrically throw himself into Liam’s waiting arms.

 

But Zayn did none of that.

 

He didn’t have time to do anything, either, because the car was driving past him and then coming to a stop very abruptly. Liam yanked the door open and stuck his head out, staring and Zayn in a way that ranged from disbelieve to fascination and back again.

 

They both stayed like that for a few awfully stretched minutes in which Zayn could feel the cold sweat on his palms and the dread twirling low in his stomach, mixing together with the dull pleasure of seeing the person who had been the proverbial pink elephant in his room (and dreams and breathes). The engine of Liam’s car was still purring, his hair flattened, the lock of his brow seemingly permanent. Zayn kept on standing and staring and keeping his grave like silence while wondering how this could’ve been yet another grandiose painting, with the sky so grey in the background it edged on purple.

 

He had went into rehab at Harry’s, in a way. He had been smarter and faster this time, a bit of wisdom gained through age and experience. Don’t sit it out – it’ll tempt you, creep back into your life and powder your kitchen counters a dusty, snowy white.

 

He was fresh out and within half an hour presented with his drug again.

 

“Uh, Zayn. Hey. I’ve been loo – how are you?” Liam seemed unable to decide which sentence he was going to use. His posture was stiff, still half-in, half-out of the car. Zayn let his eyes skip over the smudgy overalls, the engine oil stain on his sleeve, the Ford Escort that had had its prime sometime in the 1990s.

It was ironic how much Liam would’ve fitted in back home, in Bradford. All the post-deindustrialized glamour that spread across the brown houses, squatted together, narrow. So fuckin’ narrow.

 

Zayn didn’t realize for a good few seconds that Liam had asked another question. A part of him still wanted to fling himself against Liam and lick a stripe down his throat, but something else was churning inside him, growling, angry, inflated with heat.

 

So he turned around and walked, ignoring Liam’s voice calling out for him. For a second he closed his eyes and pretended a long stretch of illuminated catwalk was before him, judging eyes and snapping cameras all around.

Just walk, walk, walk. Trip and fall? Never mind, walk. Lost your shoe? Fuck it, walk. Lost your head? Your heart? Other important organs?

 

Bloody walk.

 

Until nobody could see you, then you can bleed and die and maybe cry.

 

It didn’t occur to him until he had turned so many corners, there was no way Liam could see him anymore, that he was humiliated. Because he had bent at the slightest action, because he had quit his bloody job for whatever unclear reason, because of the feeling that bloomed in every pore of his body whenever Liam was near.

Maybe Liam had brought a bit of action into his pathetic life – but he had also pointed out just that. That it was –

 

Pathetic.

 

And for the first time it actually got to him.

 

He waited outside Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko’s building until Harry emerged, cigarette perched between his lips, curls still shower-moist. His raised eyebrows made Zayn laugh – bitterly, but nonetheless. The one last friend he had left after nearly thirty years of living and breathing and walking.

 

He wasn’t sure what Liam had meant to tell him when he turned up just now, but right now he wasn’t sure he wanted to bother. Liam had been his life for the past few months, and he was shaken with such ease, it would only require maybe an ounce more to make him do something drastic. Cut a new tattoo with rusty razorblades. Maybe fuck someone dangerous. Take the bus to that filthy spot he still had carved in his head and buy a few scales off some dodgy lad. Maybe overdose.

 

He was on the passive side. Just not when it came to hurting himself.

 

“D’you realize you’re fucked up?” Harry told him after he quit his brand new Italian job, with both of them back in bed, tangled up.

“Yeah.” Zayn heard himself say. “I just… dunno. Can’t find, like. The meaning.”

“Long fucking sentence for you.” Harry said, thumbs drawing soft circles on Zayn’s bony shoulder. “Meaning of what?”

“Of everything.” Zayn said.

 

Then he smiled at the surprising truth his words held.


	17. Interlude (“Who stole the soul from the sun?”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a chapter from Harry's POV.

Harry wasn’t used to keeping track of time.

 

There would be days where he’d forget to get up or leave his tea mug out on the window sill, days where looking up for a minute meant hours gone. Numerous people had told him over the years that he had it, all of it, if only he would try a little harder. The smile crooked at just the right angle, the quick wit he never quite voiced, and the charm he could work but rarely did.

 

Truth of the matter was that Harry didn’t want any of it.

 

Teachers, parents, guidance counselors, career advisors had told him he could do whatever he wanted to. Harry only remembered the peculiarities that matched the urgent voices pushing him back and forth: a funny-shaped clock, a photograph with two pairs of twins. A crack in the window where the rains was drip-dropping in, running in luminous beads, slipping away like time.

 

And Harry agreed with all of them. He could do whatever he wanted to. Scratch that, he did whatever the hell he wanted to. Against all better judgment, he had chosen his major in Philosophy at Uni, taking extra courses in medieval art and architecture. If people asked him what he loved about the subject, he would reply: “The curves.” Or perhaps: ”The irremediable contrast between all matters.”

 

Sometimes he could talk and fail to understand himself. That always gave him the most pleasure – that his mind, his subconscious hadn’t yet surrendered, but was still full of surprises.

“Full of rubbish.” Zayn had told him one lazy, chilled autumn, sprawled across the moist grass with his limbs askew, eyes molten blinks of gold against the pale sky. That had been maybe four months before the sharp lady in Crayola blue scouted him and bought him his first ever plane ticket for a dubious casting program.

 

Harry wasn’t sure. He never kept track of time.

 

The rest of it was a long, obscured line of events, like a pearl necklace disassembled.

 

He was still scrambling for the loose beads, years after.

 

One week or so after Zayn quit his professional career at Starbucks and rendered himself useless for anything besides curving in on himself in the narrow single bed, Harry applied for the open spot behind the counter and got it with a snap. He was exceptionally good at getting jobs he wasn’t at all serious about.

 

That’s how he found himself working the late shift almost every day of the week, smudged with cocoa powder and splashed with skim milk, half-smiling at mumbling customers. He found occasional pleasure in mixing up things a little bit, altering the Christmas special with just a few drops of peppermint, or cinnamon, or banana. He also liked smiling at the children that came tottering in every now and then, between the endless stream of suited business men and women.

 

Harry had been called a hippie throughout his college days, not in referral to his fashion choices, but to his laid back attitude, not just concerning the day, but seemingly his ever on-stretching life. While others fretted over student loans and underpayment, or the bleak economic situation, he happily flipped burgers at McDonalds.

 

Harry liked to tell people it wasn’t just a random McDonalds, but a McDonalds on the Isle of Men, and he had been there to specifically see how people lived under crown dependency.

 

Just like that.

 

In the first two weeks at his new Starbucks job, he served Danielle Payne six times. She came hurdling in, talking on her phone or tapping away furiously on it, always ordering the same bleak Latte. She returned the cup in which Harry tried to add some chocolate flavor.

She had a frantic look about her, he had decided after the fourth time. A frantic look that wore down her sweet chubbiness and gave her eye-bags.

 

She looked like she loved hating her work, or the other way around.

 

Once Harry was quite sure he heard her talking to her husband, clearing some schedule and asking about dinner, which, no, she wouldn’t be eating at home, because the vice-president of so-and-so was holding a banquet. Harry could sense her annoyance mixing and mingling with the unease, or perhaps even guilt.

 

At night he went home and switched between pounding Zayn into his cheap, squeaky bed and comforting him by breathing against the curve of his neck.

 

At these times the thought occurred to him, again and again, that maybe this was where he managed to reassemble his pearls. Curled up with Zayn making soft-sleep noises, dreams full of married men with easy, crinkled smiles, and powdery cocaine snowing from the sky, Harry felt at ease.

 

It didn’t concern him the slightest that his personal pleasure was built upon Zayn’s misery and very possible, quite cliché heart-break.

 

Because in the end, between flipping all the burgers, selling the lattes, tramping all the way to Odessa and completely disregarding time, Harry wasn’t at all Hippie. He didn’t live for nor against any particular ideology or dream, not for universal suffrage or human rights. He lived for himself.

 

He was selfish. Exquisitely, wonderfully selfish.

 

And having Zayn so vulnerable at hand made his pulse race a thousand miles an hour.

 

Of course, having him bodily was never a question. They’ve been at it since their university days, excluding the few vacant years in which Zayn had been busy posing, Harry busy traveling the least touristic countries he could find.

 

Harry had deflowered the lad himself.

 

Now that the last days of their so-called youth was on a count-down, he found himself with an urgent, egocentric need of having more of Zayn that just his legs spread or lips parted. And if Liam Payne happened to have good timing with his mental crack, then so be it.

 

It was worth every last second the spent, tangled up together, with Zayn half-lidded, drunk on his personally declared failure and the absence of Liam Payne. Harry, on his part, would be drunk on vodka and self-destruction, the toxic taste of it all.

 

Having someone right in your arms and not having them at all.

 

It was quite lovely.

 

A few years ago Harry might’ve tried to break it down philosophically. Cite Nietzsche, or Hegel. But age had brought him the wisdom studying hadn’t: that all the books and phrases and places you traveled to wouldn’t change the reality you are facing.

 

And Harry was facing…

 

Harry was facing Liam Payne on a Friday evening, with the last of his customers gone and a fine layer of snow settling on the pavement outside. The day had been long and dreary, the perfect kind to just slip off into thin air and be forgotten, to have thoughts and mop floors and practice the right arch of a smile to scare off children.

 

Liam was standing outside the tall glass window, blinking in through the red and green Christmas decorations, shoulders hunched against the cold, clearly searching.

 

Harry didn’t hesitate.

 

He pulled up a big, lazy smile, the kind that got people to blink in surprise, or alternately blush. He knew how to look genuine without having even an ounce of it in his bones. Then he raised his hand and waved at Liam, like they were old acquaintances, friends from far back that had decided to meet up.

 

It took some time, but after a few moments the door pushed open with a welcoming jingle and a gush of frozen, snow-dotted air swept in along with Liam, who stepped in reluctantly, eyes scanning the room, skipping past Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko, who, now that Harry officially worked here, came for the secret freebie coffee and sat for hours at a time.

 

“Uh, hi.”

 

Harry gave an inward cringe at the uncertainty that screamed from every syllable Liam spoke out loud. “Hey, mate. Want a coffee? Chai? Christmas special? Hot chocolate?”

 

“I’d… have a hazelnut then, please.”

 

Harry turned to prepare the beverage, watching Liam from the corner of his eye. A grown man, almost fidgeting, eyes skipping back and forth, mouth a tight, miserable line.

 

God, they made a nice pair, the two of them.

 

He set down the mug, spraying an artistic flurry of whipped cream on top, sprinkling some cocoa powder. “There you go.”

Liam just nodded, closed his large, calloused hands around his chocolate, and stayed put in front of the counter while taking the first few sips. Harry sorted away the new cash, still smiling to himself, lips pulled up in just the right angle to not appear overbearing.

 

People were right about him, mostly. He did have it.

 

But he lost it whenever things started to matter.

 

“Harry?” Liam was licking cream from his upper lip, and Harry could see with all clarity what Zayn saw: Stability. Warmth. Boiled potatoes for dinner. Sunday football at some safe, friendly bar.

“Yeah?”

“Have you… where’s Zayn?”

 

Harry hesitated for a moment. “He quit the job and I filled in.” he then said, quite truthfully.

“He quit?” Liam bit his lip, brows creasing. “I’ve been around to his place every day… I, he never comes out…”

“He’s been staying at mine for a bit.”

 

Harry had once told Zayn to go for Liam, because he was genuine, and genuine people were rare. On that far-away day, months ago, he had handed Liam a line of numbers, scrawled out, just to see what would happen. He had never expected any of this. Not the weary look Liam had pressed all over his face, like he’d been bathing in guilt all day. Not the way Zayn half-closed his eyes at the ceiling when Harry bent down over him.

 

Now that things had unexpectedly evolved out of hand, Harry cared.

 

And lost it.

 

“Could you tell him…” Liam hesitated. The harsh line of his brows told Harry that he wanted to stop, put an end to everything. The look in his eyes told him otherwise. “Uh. How, how is he?”

 

“Doing well. We’ve been reminiscing the old days at university.” Harry smiled casually, drying his hands on his apron. “He usually forgets to leave after we’ve fucked.”

 

The words seared Harry’s throat in a way that pumped blood through his veins, that jumbled up the words lining in his head. He couldn’t quite interpret Liam’s look. Something almost solemn. Quiet. Hurt? Was he hurt?

 

Harry thought of Zayn in his bed, torso long and stretched, thought of bleak mornings and quiet breathing. Then another stream of icy cold air hit him as Liam exited the store. He relished the few snowflakes making it to the counter and melting away at the heat. Relished it rushing through him like a snort of coke. Or a tongue dipping into his navel.

 

It was fucking exhilarating. 

 

\---  
\----  
\-----

Who stole the soul from the sun in a world come undone at the seams? 

\- Let there be Love by Oasis


	18. Funerals

What happened next was.

 

The death of Mr. Pavelyuckenko.

 

He went out with a proper bang, heart-attack hitting him square from where he was standing in the kitchen, opening up a fresh bottle of vodka. In his last moments he gripped and struggled and took down half the kitchen-utensils with him, three bottles of liquor and a dozen small shot-glasses included.

Mrs. Pavelyuchenko was having her daily nap from three to three forty-five, and didn’t stir. Harry, for once, had an afternoon shift and was nowhere near the apartment.

 

So naturally, Zayn was the one to wander in thirty-odd minutes later, groggy from a sleepless night, boxer shorts stained with come, sweat, and a few other things he couldn’t quite make out. He didn’t notice the disarray until he stumbled over a rapidly cooling bare foot with awful horn-nails.

 

“Bloody hell.”

 

He didn’t need to feel Mr. Pavelyuchenko’s pulse to know. One look at his open, glassy eyes did the job, the way his night-robe sprawled around him like a velvet royal coat, the way his lips were still curled up in satisfaction over the fresh bottle that had shattered and coated most of his chest-area with vodka.

 

Zayn sat with the body until three forty-five, composing a painting he was bound to make in his head, sipping directly from the one remaining bottle of Gorbatchov.

In those twenty-three minutes and sixteen seconds, he realized that lighting of the kitchen was perfect for a gloomy Burberry photo-shoot, that he had been squatting in Harry’s room for three weeks now, and that the small cutting boards Mrs. Pavelyuchenko used for her red onions were the perfect size and shape for a single snort.

 

Everything dissolved from three forty-five on.

 

Mrs. Pavelyuchenko was gripped with a grief so immediate and strong that she sat herself down and cooked them a meal of Borscht and Derunyi pancakes before moving her husband of sixty-five years to the living room, where they placed him painstakingly on the sofa.

Then she sat down and wept, while Zayn sat by and chewed on his dark, sour bread and wondered how a little lady so parched and wrinkly could produce such crystal clear liquid salt.

Harry returned around six, walking in on their crying-chewing-grief-session. He sat down in front of the couch and then started crying, too, curls matted from the snow that was still coming down outside, looking exceptionally pale under his permanent tan.

 

The rest of the day included more food and twenty-seven phone calls made on alternately Harry’s and Zayn’s mobile.

 

The first person to arrive was young Doctor Bogdanovich, speaking a fluent mixture of Ukrainian and proper Oxford English to pronounce the death. Then came personnel from the insurance company, funeral planners and three different versions of Mr. Pavelyuchenko’s will, which had to be translated and assessed first.

Harry sat himself down and poured over the financial matters, yellowed old pages from the 1950s, overnight. He quit his job at the Starbucks via e-mail and then went to fetch a dusty English-Ukrainian dictionary from the nearest library.

 

Zayn felt out of place, mostly. Maybe because he had never bothered getting to know the couple better, despite the numerous drunken escapades of Cossack dancing and living at their apartment for almost a month. Mainly he sensed a certain detachment because it put his own misery into perspective.

 

He was heart-broken, sure he was.

 

Over something no-one had yet pronounced, over a person. A man. A married man. Then again, he was mourning his high-flying days of destruction, the nights where he would fall asleep bitten and exhausted. The time where he had still hoped for things and forgotten about dreams he once had, just to knead up new ones.

 

Essentially, he was grieving himself.

 

While good-for-nothing Mikhail broke down over the new coffin of his late father and ordered the company to remake it, because the edges weren’t smooth enough. Mrs. Pavelyuchenko was busy crying and baking and stirring pots and talking to all Ukrainians within Great Britain and those abroad, too.

 

There was a constant stream of condolers, all exclusively Eastern European. The second and third generation clustered together, speaking in Yorkshire accents, translating for their parents and grandparents, smoking fags on the balcony. A few of the girls, very tall, very blonde, apparently all cousins, attempted flirting.

 

Harry walked straight past them, and Zayn followed suit.

 

He excused himself on the third day, driven away by the apartment full of people, the constant need for air, and feeling out of place. Harry took the time off to fuck him goodbye, quick and hard and brimming with repressed energy. Zayn kissed his collarbone a few times, tasting the sweat and hoping the newly arrived guests wouldn’t hear his choked moans.

 

“I’ll come by in a few days, yeah?” he murmured, while Harry tightened his grip of Zayn’s thighs, grinding his hips.

“Will you, really?” Harry finished off with those words, groaning against the crook of Zayn’s neck, lips moist and warm.

They lay like that for a lot longer than propriety would’ve allowed, what with all the people milling outside, talking in a blur of languages, mourning, shedding tears of regret and love and hatred.

 

Harry sat back when Zayn got up to get into his clothes. His green eyes were half-lid, and the flush hadn’t yet come off his chest.

‘My only friend’, he thought to himself, and something inside him tugged. Then he leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to the space between his upper lip and nose-tip, and then he thought of the years they’d spent together, the years they forgot each other and carried on just fine. It seemed that with the presence of the person, missing him was the easiest.

 

“I’ll probably spend Christmas in Donetsk.” Harry told him, a hand buried in his hair. “And I need money for two plane tickets.”

 

And on that note, Zayn left.

 

After three weeks spent confined to Harry’s bed, the air outside was pleasantly cold. The last flower-sex they’d had left him sore, but it was good to feel the burn, the stretch. A part of him thought about Liam, and how he jogged everywhere, sweat-pants and T-shirts and wet hair plastered against his forehead. Another part pushed away the thought, scared of the cutting pain that was bound to follow. Always did.

 

Perrie wasn’t home, of course she wasn’t. Everything was how he’d left it. He checked his eBay account and accepted a few of the highest bids on the three Chanel scarfs, before transferring four-hundred pounds to Harry’s bank account.

 

He showered and smoked out on the balcony, hair dripping wet, breath coming in icy gushes.

 

He was blue with cold when Perrie came home, pushing him into the shower once again. Zayn kissed her once he could feel his fingertips again, and then presented her with one of the authentic Ukrainian vodka bottles. They sat down, lightning new cigarettes, sharing the alcohol between them in small sips.

 

“Brody Rogan found out about his wife cheating.” Perrie wiped her hand on her expensive office blouse. “And ended things with me. How is that logical?” Her blonde bun had come undone, curls swirling around her pale neck. She had visible wrinkles around her eyes. She was a few years short of forty.

 

Zayn hummed. Then he put down his glass and kissed her again, feeling the dryness of her lips, smudging the dark red lipstick. They had sex right there on the couch, slow and torturous, conversation still ongoing.

“Payne’s husband’s been around.” Perrie mouthed his jaw. “mugging around the fence.”

Zayn pushed in further, hand rubbing her clit expertly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah.” Perrie moaned viciously, before lifting her hips up. Glaring into Zayn’s eyes. Her heated anger almost felt comforting.

 

They stayed put for the rest of the night. Perrie told him to sell her shirt on eBay, lounging in her nakedness, pulling on a smoke. It was, perhaps, her way of telling him that she’d missed him.

 

It was half-past three in the morning when Zayn looked up and found her asleep against a cushion, hair fanned out, brows pulled together, lips thin. And he saw her with the exact same expression on, years back, when they had turned and caught each other across the room with such precision.

 

“Perrie?” Zayn leaned down and smoothed over her fringe. She was awake at once, blinking against the darkness of the room.

“God, I forgot you were back.” She exhaled, before reaching over to the pack of cigarettes, and the gesture made him smile. They were so damn similar, but miles apart.

“Perrie, I want a divorce.”

 

She didn’t look up from where she was fumbling with her lighter, the flame bursting and illuminating the hollows of her eyes. “I figured as much.” She sunk back into the sofa, smoke curling upwards with a sigh. “Danielle Payne’s husband. Who would’ve thought.”

 

“It’s not that.” Zayn told her, before giving in and lighting another cigarette for himself as well. “It’s… sort of everything else.”

“You were always fucked up.” She confirmed, and within the flickering shadows, he could sense her smiling, too.

“You married me.”

“You let me.”

 

And that was all Zayn remembered of the conversation when he woke the next morning. Of course there was no haste to clear out the house, but he started anyway.

 

Their joint closet. He nicked one of Perrie’s expensive suitcases and stuffed it with generic black T-shirts. Then he packed up his painting set, and started getting down all the pictures of him modeling from the walls of the house. He hesitated before taking down the one of him running down the Italian street, coat fluttering, designer underwear snug, but did anyways.

After piling all of it outside the gates by the bins, he started hanging up the paintings he had done over the years. Skies. Sceneries. Sketches of random, distorted people.

 

After that was done, his chest actually felt empty for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

 

The four paintings of Liam sat in their corner, and Zayn crouched on the ground to take a better look at his own work. After weeks of absence, he saw what he had painted in a drunk haze, in a beaten flurry, in heart-wrenching calm, with new eyes.

 

He smoked another three cigarettes by the window until springing into action.

 

The paintings were stored in a big Ikea bag and he bothered to put on his coat before making his way through the building wall of snow. He had walked this particular route hundreds of times, or more. It felt like thousands to him. This time he pulled through, breath fogging in the air, hands curled around the blue bag.

 

The streets wheeled past him while he walked ahead.

 

He could vaguely remember snippets of the accented, or translated conversation they had had at the Pavelyuchenko’s apartment. So many years of marriage, now come to an end. How they’d made it to England. Wars fought, countries stained red, left behind. Years, years until good-for-nothing Mikhail was conceived.

 

Good for nothing Mikhail sobbing helplessly, speaking to his mother in the few Ukrainian words he knew, dreadlocks moist from the snow that was pouring down, down, down. Still pouring.

 

Then he thought of the angle Mr. Pavelyuchenko’s lips had been when Zayn had walked in on him dead. So many years, so far away, and now dead. Dead, soaked in vodka. Dead.

 

He found himself in front of the building the Payne’s lived in when the sky had already darkened. 

 

He took the elevator up to the top floor. The gleaming surfaces showed him the tear tracks on his face, and it was oddly calming. That he was able to mourn anyone besides himself.

He wasn’t at all nervous when he rang the bell, smelling dinner being cooked. Whenever dread threatened to take over, he thought of the tear drops making their way down Mrs. Pavelyuchenko’s wrinkled cheek, and it kept him anchored.

 

He heard shouting, then footsteps.

 

Before he could form another thought, the door was opened.

 

Liam was still speaking to his wife, turning to Zayn mid-sentence. He had an apron on, yellow with busy bumble-bee patterns, and his sweat pants were stained with some sauce.

 

Zayn couldn’t stop the snorting laugh that escaped his mouth. Then he found that it triggered more tears. Liam, whom he had dedicated all his misery to. Liam, who had made him pancakes and kissed the side of his head on rare Sundays. Who had fled his house after seeing the exact paintings he was now carrying in his Ikea bag.

 

It took him a few seconds to realize Liam was gaping at him.

 

The silence was filled with the telly mumbling in the background, sizzling noises from the kitchen, and Zayn’s wet breathing pattern.

 

“God… I. What are you…? I looked for you.” Liam was gripping the door knob for support. “The Starbucks, I…” then he took a step back and his face took on a guarded expression.

 

“Harry said you were staying at his.”

 

“I was.” Zayn managed. Then he wiped the wetness off his cheek and held out the blue bag. “Here.”

 

Liam didn’t react. “What is it, why…” then he was reaching out, trying to touch, hands brushing the tears out of the corner of his left eye. Zayn took a step back, still holding out the bag.

“Take it, it’s for you.”

 

Liam dropped his hands. Then he reached out again and took the paintings, paling in the glow of the corridor lightning. “Zayn.” He said, eyeing himself on the canvas wearily. “What, why…”

 

Then there was a call from the background, a feminine voice sing-songing, asking where her husband was. Liam stilled and Zayn took a few steps backwards, hands now empty.

 

“Wait –“

 

But Danielle had just reached the door and Zayn was already pressing the elevator buttons. He watched himself in the dark mirrors all the way down to the lobby. He thought briefly about painting the apron, Liam’s wide eyes. Then he abolished it and took the bus to Harry’s, breathing in and out, in and out.

 

Silence had settled over the apartment, and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko was asleep in one of the arm-chairs. Harry was dressed in only his underwear when he greeted him at the door, and then made him sit down and eat some leftovers from the memorial get-together.

 

Zayn stared at the spot where Mr. Pavelyuchenko had laid while chewing on some extra sour dark bread. Harry sat next to him, uncharacteristically silent, eyes closed.

The lamps were buzzing, the bottles lining the counter reflected the side of Harry’s head. Zayn finished his late meal, leaning back, head swimming with the newfound calmness.

 

“I think that I…” Harry opened his eyes and poured himself something nasty and brown. He took a decent swig before focusing his eyes on Zayn again. “need this more than I would admit.”

Zayn rubbed his face. Then he took a good look at Harry, squinting his green eyes, still ever so vibrant. “We both do.”

 

Silence took over.

 

“Where will you be going, then?”

Zayn stayed put for a moment. Then he realized the answer was already there, on the tip of his tongue. The rows and rows of narrow, brown houses closing in, the spice in the air.

 

“Home.”


	19. In which Liam doubles over

Christmas always brought on endless exhaustion.

 

Exhaustion from eating and talking and smiling, from cooking and coddling and kissing. Liam liked it. Liked bringing Danielle home to his parents, to the familiar smell of his childhood, to the comfort of his too-small bed with the Mickey-Mouse covers. He had had dreams about it, way before their engagement and marriage. Taking her home, making her feel at home.

Over the years, driving up north for the holidays had become a routine, something they needn’t discuss.

 

This year they did.

 

And that was altogether more exhausting than any hour-long conversation with distant relatives or burning the third pudding in a row.

 

After hours spent not-talking or speaking in half-sentences, they settled on having a first private little Christmas-for-two. That night they went to sleep in a silence that felt too thick to breach, that had Liam so tired the inside of his head felt like it was recoiling with weariness. 

 

Niall had taken one look at him during their shift together and snorted a “don’t want to know, mate” before getting them coffee for an early break. They had perched on a few piled up storage boxes together, sipping the cheap, bitter warmth and Liam had relished the quiet that settled with the roll and pump of engines and the occasional exchanged word. 

 

The paintings haunted him quite literally.

 

He hid them, quite conveniently, while heading to the cellar to fetch last year’s Christmas décor. They sat in an unsuspicious corner, stacked in a neat pile, wrapped up in the Ikea bag they came in. Liam had only looked them over once, eyes fleeting in the muted yellow lighting the cellar provided, oddly embarrassed at his on portrayal.

 

Zayn made him look different.

 

He left out the dark shadows that lined Liam’s eyes on the start of the week, he forgot to paint the way his forehead was creasing, the way his eyes looked dull whenever he caught a glance of himself in a mirror. Instead, there were colors, splashed and soft, a mixture of light and tangled bed sheets, of rain and the soft-bronze of his hair.

 

It scared him. Rattled the marrow of his bone, like a realization he couldn’t quite name had hit him. The pictures, crying dollops of paint silently in the dark cellar, and Zayn, wiping away his tears outside their apartment, hands reaching out, a half-smile hovering over his lips – those were probably the things that shook him out of nameless dreams at night.

 

It occurred to him, a few days after Zayn’s surprise visit, that it had been the definite end to everything. A goodbye of sorts. And while Liam knew he should be relieved that everything went down so quietly, that Danielle had yet to suspect even a thing, that his life was finally back on track to being normal again, he still found himself staring off into space every now and then. Hands holding a cooking spatula, or an engine-oil stained rag, stroking through Danielle’s soft curls, his mind suddenly replayed pieces of a conversation they once had, or the way Zayn would look when he got up and smoked leaning against the window.

 

If Liam had had the talent, he would’ve drawn it. Or snapped a magnificent picture of it. Now, as it was, all he did was preserve the imageries in his head, playing and re-playing, over and over again.

 

Danielle worked every day until the company’s Christmas party. In between snippets of Zayn floating through the depths of his mind and the steady motions of his hands, Liam noticed that she looked worn out, tired, more so than usual.

It stroke the guilt in him again. For the first time, he didn’t quite know whom the feeling should be addressed to – Danielle, bruised underneath her eyes and lax with fatigue, or Zayn, standing in his doorway, face streaked with tears, utterly gorgeous with misery.

 

Even that he wore well.

 

Danielle, too, put on a dress that hugged her curves like a protection shield and made Liam wear a cravat. He didn’t object, with the way her mouth was sharp-set on making their first Christmas alone a success.

Just the way she made herself into one, her company, her colleagues.

 

They made it through the evening just fine, the grand Christmas tree in the middle of the room sparkling tastefully gold and a deep, wine red, evening robes dragging along the polished wooden floor boards. Liam took to his usual routine of standing about and eating as much from the expensive, catered buffet as possible. The pleasant chatter around him drowned out half the memories that welled up whenever his mind conjured past occasions just like this one. Zayn being tugged out of the men’s loo, expression carefully blank, profile sharp in Liam’s first impression. Zayn perching on a wooden table, half-lit, lips a soft curve as Liam just –

 

Forgot.

 

From the corner of his eye he spotted Brody Rogan and his wife Jennifer, whose impending divorce by now just about everyone knew of, sipping champagne, wearing a matching set of smiles.

Liam averted his eyes. He wasn’t allowed to judge anyone. And frankly speaking, he was also too tired to feel anything near self-righteous. 

 

“What are you – “

“I’m looking at the Rogans.”

Liam had seen him coming this time. Louis, son of that senior partner Jennifer Rogan slept with, was wearing a ridiculously green suit, complete with a bright red bow-tie. His French Mother was gesticulating at the food a few paces away, making a heavily-accented speech for half a dozen other ladies.

“You saw me.” Louis glanced up at him, in a way that people might’ve mistaken for shyness, but really was only a well-disguised bratty stare.

“Hard not to.” Liam nodded towards the boy’s ridiculous outfit. Louis colored slightly, but tilted his head away defiantly.

“Well, since you don’t like the look of me, I won’t have to tell you anything about the Edwards.”

 

Liam stilled.

 

“Bye Mr. Payne! Thank you for the biscuit.” Louis smiled triumphantly-sweet and picked a pastry off Liam’s plate with nimble fingers.

“Wait!” Liam didn’t realize how his breath had grown heavy, how his palms suddenly felt clammy. He quickly set down the plate on the edge of a windowsill and bit the inside of his cheek. “What… why?”

Louis had darted back to him, eyes greedy. He hadn’t stopped smiling for a second, and Liam suddenly realized how unnatural it looked on a child his age.

“Why do you… do this? This game you play.”

“I’m a child, I play. It’s within my nature.” Louis huffed, like it was beside the point. “Anyway, the Edwards are getting a divorce.”

 

Liam didn’t quite remember turning away, but suddenly he was holding his plate again, chewing away, tasting the bitter edge of the rich vanilla sauce on his tongue. “Go play with your siblings, Louis.”

“They’re not here.” Louis sounded vicious. “I’m the eldest, so I’m allowed. They’re not.”

Liam didn’t respond to that. He felt his shoulders sagging, felt the heaviness of the last few secretive, desperate months dragging him down. He was so tired – so tired of this constant tug and pull between love and sex and betrayal and marriage. Louis, small as he was, had such a vicious angle to his mouth. The child had only bothered, unhinged Liam before. Annoyed him, perhaps. 

 

Now, like the rest of it all, he only made him incredibly weary.

 

And that was all that happened on Danielle’s Corporate Christmas Party. For Liam at least – because he didn’t hear a single word anyone spoke to him after Louis had skipped away, cheeks rosy and happy, looking for someone else to torment.

 

Zayn was getting a divorce. Or was he? Was his wife leaving him? Or was it a mutual agreement?

 

The thoughts lay heavy in his stomach along with all the sweets he had stuffed himself with. It occurred to him, in the taxi, on their way home, that he felt responsible. For ending a marriage. Not a particularly happy one, sans foot-rubs and home-made casseroles, but it had been a legal bond to the very least.

It made him feel an achy burn in his lungs every time he inhaled, and the by now quite familiar spike of guilt raking through. But on the other hand, a small, vicious part of him, one that he tried his best to ignore, glowed warm at the thought that Zayn couldn’t stand being with anyone that wasn’t Liam.

 

The mixture of pleasure and heat, blame and unease gave him a flush that he could see on himself in the darkened windows of the car. Danielle would hopefully just think that he’d had one flute of champagne too much.

 

She was humming to herself, limbs relaxed in a sort of lassitude that always took over when she was allowed a breather after something formal. Liam noticed the smoky colors around her eyes, smudged, bleeding into the line of her eye-lids. She was randomly playing around with the rings on her hand: a few that she wore for fashionable reasons, one from her very best childhood friend, and their wedding band.

Without thinking, he reached out and brushed back a lock of hair that had escaped her elegant bun.

 

“Hey.” She leaned back, mouth just barely quirking upwards into a smile. “Did you like it at all? Was it horrible?”

“The food was good. I packed Niall and the lads the quiche.”

“Oh yeah. Right. Tell them to come over for the whassit – match.”

“On Boxing day?”

“Yeah.”

 

She leaned towards him, a gesture of habit.

 

And it tugged something inside him.

It was quite true that Liam had discovered a desperate side within himself. That there were paintings in their cellar, kisses trailed down his back. That Zayn, and anything that was remotely related to him, unsettled Liam so much it felt like he was bodily sick. But it was also true that the end of their affair had already come and gone.

 

And that Danielle was still here.

 

Mussed up, half-asleep, smudged and tired. Liam sighed a little – at the sight of his wife, flying so high, aiming even higher. And at the sight of himself, aging, creasing, lines appearing on his forehead.

 

Liam made Danielle scrambled eggs once they were home, because she had barely eaten anything of the fancy buffet. He toasted some bread and poured her hot milk out of the microwave.

Skim milk, of course.

 

Their own little Christmas tree on the counter blinked happily, a collection of bright lights and funny snowmen toppling over themselves. Danielle tugged herself into her fluffy bathrobe and cradled the milk mug while Liam allowed himself a few beers. The telly was put on mute, pictures flickering in and out.

 

“Do you miss your mum?”

“I always miss my mum.”

“I guess.”

 

Danielle frowned a little. “Have you noticed?”

“What?”

“That we haven’t really sat down and talked for ages.”

“Ages?”

“Yeah, like we used to.”

 

They did. Within the first few years of their relationship, the fighting-screaming-tossing episode notwithstanding, they had spent hours upon hours listening to the same record again and again, while talking. Just talking. Danielle had gone through packets of gum and Liam had developed a habit of keeping water glasses around.

 

They had been so young back then. So different.

 

His mind immediately provided him with pictures of Zayn, scribbling doodles over the business section of the Times, nodding along to whatever Liam rambled on about. He quickly pushed that image aside.

 

“Tell me.” Danielle said, “Tell me about three things that happened. Since last Christmas.” 

“Are you drunk?” Liam plucked the mug out of her hands.

“Yes, I had three glasses of Shafer and a Puligny.”

“I had cobbler.”

“They served cobbler?” Danielle took back her mug and frowned again. She looked washed out without the rouge staining her cheeks. “But – three things, Liam. Three things I don’t know.”

 

A lot of things had happened since last December.

 

“Niall had a girlfriend for three weeks in March.”

Danielle snorted. “You can’t call that dating. Three weeks doesn’t count as dating.”

“I think for him it did. Her visa expired, though.”

“Never mind, another thing!”

“Hmm.” Liam pursed his lips and tried to ignore the way his pulse sped up, as if scared that words might just tumble out of his mouth. “You tell one.”

“Fine, okay.” Danielle was slurring a bit, just a bit. She had drunk her stress away, and now the alcohol was kicking in, he realized belatedly. “I ordered a refurbishing of our guest room last month.”

Liam shrugged. “What for?”

“It doesn’t fit – the color of the bed. I wanted something darker from the beginning.”

“No need to ask me.” Liam said it without edge. There really was no need – she was going to pay for it, with her money.

“Oh come on!” Danielle rolled her eyes. “You don’t care about the bloody guest room.”

“Yeah, sure.” Liam sighed. “I set a new personal record.”

“What, with the running?”

“Yeah.”

 

They were both silent for a while. Then Danielle turned to him, eyes starry and blank, and Liam realized that she was right. These were things they didn’t talk about anymore. The small things that became important when accumulated. The small things that, when ignored, built up seperate paths away from each other.

 

“I was pregnant.”

 

Liam didn’t react to the words immediately. When he turned to look at his wife, she seemed otherworldly. Fuzzy at the edges. “What?”

“You heard me. I was pregnant, only thirteen weeks or so.”

“You got rid of it.”

“Of course I did. The timing just wasn’t… right.”

“The timing?”

 

Liam heard the wondering tilt in his voice. He watched the blinking lights on their tiny little tree, dread spreading through his veins, toxic and burning-hot. “When?”

“Last month.” Danielle’s eyes were glassy. “Don’t look at me like that, for God’s sake. You knew I didn’t want to. Not now.”

“You… you didn’t tell me.” And with a slap the realization settled in. Liam felt electrified, felt something buzzing inside him. It took him a second to realize it was anger. “You never told me.”

“I’m telling you now.” Danielle swirled her remaining milk around the mug.

 

Before Liam knew what he was doing, the porcelain had already shattered against their floor, white liquid spilling every which way. Danielle shrieked, clutching the seams of her bathrobe: “Are you mad, are you – ”

“Yes, I’m mad.” There was a dull roar in his ears that made it difficult to hear, so he spoke louder. Yelled. “Our child. Danielle, our bloody child!”

“Stop screaming!” she sunk into a corner of the couch, wiping away fresh tears. “Liam, it wasn’t right. I couldn’t have – it would have meant maternal leave…”

 

With a swipe the Christmas tree was off the counter, pine needles scattering. Liam was on his feet, and he felt his chest heaving dramatically. But he just couldn’t – couldn’t get any air.

“Stop it! Stop it!” she was backing away from him, half-crawling.

“No! No fuck it I won’t!”

 

And then he was crouching, too. Doubling over from the sudden weight in his chest. It occurred to him that he was crying when Danielle’s hands came to cradle his wet cheeks.

 

It also occurred to him that it wasn’t just Zayn, or the job, or the pints of beer and bottles of wine.

 

It was everything.


	20. Kebabs

The Kebab place was small and dingy, dripping oil at every corner, grease streaks going up and down the tiled walls. Zayn cringed a little when his third cousin Tariq handed over a rag for their morning wipe-up routine. It looked the exact reason why the place was so filthy.

 

“Safe as fuck, man, yeah, you bein’ back an’ all.” Tariq was starting the heating system, short-cropped head bobbing animatedly somewhere near the floor. “Phokat mein! This place is proper bollocks, yeah? But it runs the biz, yeah?“

“Yeah?” Zayn started wiping down the counter, before turning to the water tap and vigorously rinsing the rag.

“Me mum showed me them pictures, yeah? Proper wicked.”

“They’re pretty old, man.”

“Feel sorry about that bird of yours, yeah, poper rawas, but them English ones are trouble, they always are.”

 

Zayn nodded along gamely while wringing out his rag. He had almost forgotten what people up here sounded like – how he himself used to talk. He unlearned most of the slang at university, and while people still grinned at his broad vowels, he had come a long way.

Not that he hadn’t missed it at all, the lilts, the up-and-downs, the randomly strewn in Urdu words that he needed a few seconds to process.

 

Tariq stood up at the same time the low buzz of the heating system started with a throaty roar. He had been Zayn’s favorite cousin back in the days, always showing him where to knick stuff or sneaking him cigarettes before school. He had now bought this place after their Khalu Syed had passed away three years ago. “It’s good to have you back, cousin.”

 

Zayn smiled and gave the counter a hard rub. It did feel good to be back – his mother had given a high-pitched half-moan when he appeared on the ragged old door-steps of their house one and a half weeks ago, and immediately called together all their relatives, never mind that it was half past five in the morning. His sisters had gathered in the living room, all curvier and lusher than he last remembered, the youngest one already doing A-levels.

He had guiltily acknowledged that he hadn’t been much of a brother to any of them, but the shy, amazed looks they chucked in his direction ever so often indicated that his mum had held the absence of her wayward only son in a tall shrine.

 

After eating for what felt like twenty-four hours straight and booking all the money he’d ever made to his mum’s family bank account he fell into his hastily cleared-out old room and didn’t emerge for four days. He texted Harry a few times, and he had endless, endless dreams of Liam and paint-brushes. 

 

But it was okay. It really was.

 

Now he was at his brand-new job with cousin Tariq, dripping with grease at nine in the morning. People came in occasionally, in their work-clothes, eyes still puffy with sleep, for their routine greetings. The older ones remembered Zayn from his school days; the younger ones had heard all about him and seen his advert spreads. Zayn smiled at them all while wiping every other surface available in the shop.

It occurred to him around noon, when Tariq was crouching down on his little prayer rug for Dhuhr, that people didn’t mind him being a failure. Maybe they even liked him for it.

 

Perrie had sent him the divorce agreement in a thick stack, things to sign and read, but Zayn skipped most of them. The financial settlement said something about a sizeable sum for him, the house for her. For a moment it bugged him that there was so very little left of the past years, that Perrie was shoving him off with such an impersonal thing as money. But then it occurred to him that first of all, he had asked for it himself, and then – he had been living off her long enough as it was.

 

The stack of legal documents were now on their way back to London.

 

Once things were processed, he would be back to his old last-name. People up here never knew what to do with the ‘Edwards’ gracing the corners of magazines in small print, anyway.

 

He was a Malik. Everyone knew him as a Malik.

And for the first time in years, wearing the smudged old shirt, listening to Tariq ramble on about his brothers, he felt like a Malik, too.

 

He had two of the three wrong orders for lunch, smearing the paisley-patterned apron with dripping fat from the kebab skewer. While chewing and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand repeatedly, Zayn thought about the entirely different world he had left behind with one train ride, and that throughout the last three years, he had denied himself this easy familiarity of home. Because he had felt a failure – and he had been scared of people looking at him, of his mum sighing, of disappointed headshakes. Once again, it was refreshing to find that none of them really cared.

 

He had already run across a few of his old mates, some of them by now married, Asif, the one who used to always get caught sneaking spliffs, even had a little daughter now. They all reacted with surprise first, then violently nostalgic – he got updates on all their current life situations, and though it was quite confusing to catch on at first, Zayn liked it. He liked how everyone was still the same, how none of them had ceased with their old habits and little ways of speaking and moving.

 

He had thought of it all to be backwards and tight-minded, downright suffocating the year he left for university.

 

Now it was comforting.

 

Not that it kept him from dreaming at night.

Sometimes he would wake up at an odd hour, with the birds chirping into the pale winter sun, or pitch-darkness, or the dull light of the afternoon, and remember Liam handing him something. Or stroking through his hair. Snapping the window shut, telling him it’s freezing.

It would always take him ages to forget the phantom of a hand on his forehead, the ghost of Liam’s voice still echoing. Sometimes he found himself with an outstretched hand, and words jumbled on his sleep-heavy tongue.

 

His mum started having people over a few days after he got the job at Tariq’s Kebab house. They were mostly other families, mothers round and curvy under their layers of cloth, small children hanging off their arms, all big, brown eyes and soft, wavy black hair. Zayn figured out the common denominator within the week: all the families had daughters between the age of twenty and twenty-five.

 

He cornered his mum about it during a shared dinner between the two of them, everyone else out of the house. It was Saturday night.

“I just got divorced.” He spread a bit of sauce over his kofta. “And twenty-one is, like, really young.”

“Oh Zayn.” His mum clucked. “Husna is such a lovely girl. Biomedical engineering, and all that.”

“Look, she’s too brainy, then.”

“Tosh, you’ve all been to university. And I’m just trying to get you back into the community.”

Zayn couldn’t say anything to that.

 

He met Husna on the following weekend and proceeded to shag her in his old bedroom. It was a moment of shared attraction and common knowledge that no, there wasn’t going to be a big Pakistani wedding any soon, but yes, they found each other pleasant, attractive and within convenient proximity for the time being. She was back home from University and obviously couldn’t wait to get back. Zayn wanted distraction from his dreams and the little ache they left behind.

 

“You’re such a slut.” Harry told him over the phone. They were leaving in a few days, just in time for Russian-orthodox Christmas in January. Mrs. Pavelyuchenko was doing okay, her cooking still rather on the obsessive-compulsive side, the visits from the Ukrainian community still quite frequent, but she was well, considering the circumstances.

Zayn smoked half a pack of cigarettes while listening to Harry’s lazy drawl. “Have you ever…” there was a rustling sound in the background. “ever thought what it would be like to lose someone, like that?”

Zayn hummed noncommittally. “Dunno. Probably wouldn’t cope very well.”

“I think I wouldn’t be able to hold up. Not the way she does.” There was something fond in his voice, something that made Zayn cringe inwardly. Because he wasn’t used to Harry caring.

 

It reminded him of the conversation they had before he’d left.

 

Or rather, the words they hadn’t spoken. Of years spent together, apart, on top of each other, just sharing a beer, a smoke. Was it more? Depended. Did they want it to be more? Maybe.

 

Just, maybe.

 

Harry was running late for his Ukrainian language class when they hung up, and Zayn felt strangely light. There were still empty condom packets on the carpet from when Husna had visited. Harry’s voice, deep and tinny over the phone, speaking about plans and dedication and an old lady. Then he thought of Tariq, who had closed the shop for today, because his long-time, on-off girlfriend from Leeds was visiting.

 

Commitment. 

 

It was such a big word to toss around, still Zayn felt the strange pressure in his chest. To just get it out, scream it at his old bedroom walls.

 

That he, for once, wanted to be somewhere, with someone.

 

Or at least, the idea of them.

 

Liam made him forget about the people he had fucked, the cocaine he had snorted, the catwalks he had tripped down, the woman he had somehow managed to marry. Made him forget that being just on the brink of miserable was his default setting. Forget that he was something of a cliché.

 

Remember that he could stop caring.

 

Or start.

 

In his imagination Zayn burst into the Payne’s living room, telling Danielle everything. Making Liam choose. His fantasies always played out with Liam placing a hand on the back of his head, steady and warm, and burying his nose to the side of his neck. The paintings would be hung on the walls, and Liam’s smile would crinkle his eyes.

Zayn always laughed, chuckled to himself, whenever he snapped back to reality after one of his daydreams behind Tariq’s greasy counter. Because even if he did have the guts to push his way further into Liam’s life, there would be, at best, a marriage crisis. There would be counseling and fights, but Danielle would forgive and Liam would make his amends. 

 

While serving some geezers dinner on plastic plates, Zayn thought about how grateful he had been for just the stolen moments every other week. Now, he realized, he wanted more than that.

 

Realized that he longed for something he could be sure of, someone to wake up to.

 

Now that he had demanded a divorce, took a train back home and got a job, the force driving him had waned. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life serving kebabs. He didn’t want to marry Husna, or any other unfortunate girl his mum would shove his way. He didn’t want any of the last few years back, either. Not the dull haze, the cold bed-sheets, the bitter taste on his tongue. Just Liam, and the pressure of his arm draped, his breath slow and steady.

 

Zayn wasn’t delusional enough to think any of his dreams real.

 

Still they kept coming.


	21. In which Liam takes up knitting

What kept him up the most these days was Niall’s snoring.

 

That, and the bone-chilling cold that crept in through the crevices and crooks of the walls. Niall only had functioning heating in his bedroom and kitchen. The sofa was old and worn and smelled faintly of pizza and garlic butter, and it dented Liam’s cheek most uncomfortably.

 

Not that he was complaining.

In the aftermath of their Christmas revelation, Liam was glad to be anywhere but his and Danielle’s apartment. There had been no more screaming, but nothing else resembling a conversation, either. In fact, it pained him to be anywhere near her, to be reminded that she had gotten rid of a child, their child, with such ease, like it was nothing. Like it didn’t fucking matter.

Niall had tried to talk him through it, at first, telling him that it was her body, after all, her decision, her life-plan. That she had every right to. “Mate, I know it’s hard, yeah? But you got to move on.”

 

Liam played deaf. He tuned out the world.

 

While sipping stale coffee out of a chipped mug with a leprechaun gazing cheekily up at him, on the fourth morning after Christmas and the third spent on Niall’s sofa, he realized that it wasn’t just the lost child, or embryo, or whatever he was bound to call it – it was the simple fact that their opinions varied so greatly on a subject so incredibly essential to their marriage. It felt like he didn’t know Danielle at all.

It felt like he didn’t know himself anymore, either. If she had had an abortion without telling him, then he’d had a filthy, mind-numbing affair with another married man.

 

Liam avoided thinking about Zayn, though. It would’ve messed up the tangles and coils in his head even more.

 

He was so soaked up in his thoughts and the painful nag inside his stomach that he straight-out missed New Years. Niall tried to get him up a few times and eventually left, placing a few cans of beers on the table in front of him. The fireworks jerked him out of his reverie and doubled his headache.

Danielle would be at yet another company party, sipping champagne and congratulating herself on all the great work done this past year. In some distant corner within his mind, Liam fervently hoped that she was just as miserable as he was, that it pained her just as much – that she too had realized their marriage, their friendship, had drifted apart and was now too far gone to rescue.

 

That they stopped talking.

 

They just. Stopped.

 

Liam blinked and found the colorful sparks of late amateur fireworks bursting apart, blurring before his eyes. His chest felt so tight, for a moment he forgot how to breathe.

 

Danielle had such a beautiful laugh.

 

Damn it all to hell.

 

He somehow managed to get dressed before stepping out into the cold. The jacket he had taken with him from the apartment wasn’t the warmest, and violent shivers wrecked his body periodically. He broke out into a jog, and within seconds he was running.

The air tasted bitter with smoke and coldness, people were singing hoarsely, voices scratchy against the dull beat resounding out of someone’s window.

 

His feet beat out a steady rhythm against the pavement and the scenery jolted by in blurred shadows. He almost jogged into a group of rowdy teens who cheered and tried to pull him into a group hug.

 

Liam tugged himself loose of them, too and carried on whatever street he was running down.

 

The next time me looked up, all the fireworks had disappeared, and save for a flickering streetlamp there was no light at all. It took him five full minutes to realize which part of town he had ended in, and another five to connect the dots.

 

The Pavelyuchenkos lived just a few blocks down.

 

The icy air was creeping up his back with slow, cold fingers, and a sudden boldness pushed Liam forward. He wasn’t even sure if Zayn would be there, or Harry, or anyone at all. But he just, he just wanted to be somewhere, anywhere.

 

The door was jarred open by someone, a few trash cans blocking half the entrance. Liam climbed all the stairs until recalling which story they lived in. Passing by various doors he heard boisterous parties in full swing, laughter and chatter and the occasional breaking glass that sounded like some comedy played on an old, dull radio.

 

When he finally found the door with the Cyrillic name plate, he already felt dazed all over again.

 

“Yeah?” Maybe a hundred years had passed between him knocking and the door opening just a fraction, but he could make out the tousled locks of a familiar head.

“Can I come in?” Liam started a little at his own voice. He sounded so calm, so sure. Like he was here with a purpose.

“Why?” Harry opened the door a little further, baggy jeans slouched low on his otherwise naked body. There were bruises under his eyes that made the skin look fragile and pale.

“Just.” Liam halted. “Why not?”

“Yeah. Why ever not.”

 

And for some unfathomable reason, Harry stepped back.

 

The inside of the apartment was eerily tidy, soft music playing in one of the dark rooms. The TV was on mute, and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko extended her hands from her place in the plush arm-chair. “Mr. Liam! You come!”

“Hello Mrs. Pavelyuchenko.” Liam kicked off his shoes and went to sit on a corner of the sofa, his bones suddenly weighty and aching. “How are things?”

“Bad, bad. Heart broken, husband dead. But Ukraine, soon. Very soon.”

 

Liam thought to look around for another moment until the words sunk in.

 

“He passed away a while ago.” Harry retook his place on the other armchair. The one, Liam realized, that must’ve belonged to Mr. Pavelyuchenko. “We’re going to Ukraine for Christmas.”

 

“But, Christmas’ already over.” Liam almost bit off his tongue while the words tumbled out. “I, uh. Yeah.”

“Orthodox Christmas is in January.” Harry commented. Then he picked up something big and bright yellow and resumed to fumbling with it.

 

“You knit?” Liam heard himself ask.

“You don’t?” Harry said with the tilt of an eyebrow.

 

“Come, come. I teach you, Mr. Liam!” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko pushed herself out of the armchair and proceeded to dig through a few rumbling cupboards. She then produced two menacingly large knitting needles and a bundle of wool in a cheap maroon color. “Come!”

 

So Liam sat himself down properly and started receiving instructions on handling the huge needles. Harry watched him from the corner of his eye, mouth twisted in soft distaste.

To Liam’s surprise, he took to knitting like a fish to water. Within five rows he had managed the basic pattern and switched to alternating ones. Mrs. Pavelyuchenko clapped her dry, bony hands in glee.

 

The old clock in the corner ticked to half-past three.

 

What an odd picture they must’ve made: one man, ashen with fatigue and desperation, still wrapped in his winter jacket, another one, bruised with days and days on end, half-naked. And last but not least, a little old lady, soft as a bird, with so much history stored away under the creases of her eyelids, working away on a scarf with nimble fingers.

 

“You very good work, Mr. Liam!” she cooed, “very steady hand.”

 

And in that moment, it almost felt like comfort to hear those words. He spotted a new cluster of old photographs set up on a polished window-sill, all of the husband, passed away. Gone. Dead. Burned to ashes.

That was what he might’ve had with Danielle. Endless grief upon losing each other at the end of endless decades spent together, holding hands, being so sure of everything, especially each other.

 

This is what he lost.

 

Only that he had never had it.

 

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Harry sighed and stood, and a moment later he was handing Liam a wad of tissues. He had started crying without meaning to. The pressure in his chest was sharp and breathing hurt. “Cut it, will you. I barely got her to stop!”

 

But Mrs. Pavelyuchenko was already crying, humming to herself softly in her mother tongue while clear beads of liquid salt slid down the crevices of her cheek.

 

“I’m sorry.” Liam said to the room in general. He looked down, and to his surprise, his hands hadn’t stopped working – the piece of practice scarf he was knitting grew longer by the second. The maroon color was so ugly that he snorted a laugh within his tears. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

 

“Fucking go to him, then!”

 

“What?”

 

“He’s in Bradford, for fucks sake.”

 

Liam wiped his nose, Harry’s angry voice still echoing in his ear. “What?”

 

“Don’t come ‘round here looking all fucked up. Just bloody go to him, tell him, whatever.”

 

So Harry was indeed talking about Zayn. Zayn, who was in Bradford, up north. Who had gone home for the holidays. Who had swallowed his own tears while thrusting that stupid Ikea bag at Liam, Liam who just stood in the doorway, apron on, deceptive domesticity at his back.

 

And within seconds he was on his feet again.

 

Mrs. Pavelyuchenko stopped him from storming out by tugging at his sleeve and packing him some sour bread and half-full bottle of vodka. Then she added the knitting needles and some extra bundles of wool.

 

Harry sported a bitter smile while he showed Liam the way out. In the uncomfortably bright hallway, he gripped Liam by the collar and gave him a kiss that was as quick as it was crushing. “I’ll see how Ukraine suits me.” He then said, almost as an afterthought. “Maybe I’ll stay.”

 

And then Liam was out the door, running and running until he could hail a cab that took him to the nearest train station.

 

The sky was tinged a peachy pink amongst the greyish blue of the night when he slumped down on a disgustingly tacky public seat, ticket to go north firmly crumpled in his fist.


	22. Stubble

Zayn celebrated New Years with his entire extended family in a nearby restaurant they rented for the very occasion. It was loud and boisterous and his uncles didn’t forget to propose a toast to him being back in the community, sound and healthy, “still a dashing lad, yes, Yee han!”.

He spent the entire next day hungover, sharing his bed with yet another cousin from Doncaster who refused to get up and left crumbs all over the place eating cheap rice crispies.

The day outside was a sluggish, careless gray that dulled the colors of the neighborhood, the streets beyond that, the sky. Zayn had a vague inclination where he had cultivated his ‘forlorn, rugged, post-coital look’, as a certain designer had once placed it.

The place was a shit-hole.

Yet the brown, muddy geometry of the neighboring houses were a familiar, almost gentle pattern outside the freshly new-years cleaned window of his childhood bedroom.

“Alright, mate?” Nawar, his bed-hogging, part-time musician cousin from Doncaster gave his shins a light kick. “You goin’ out tonight, yeah?”

“Don’t think so.” Zayn moved to bury his face in the pillow. “Fucking depressing out.”

“Drown it, man. Drown it.” And then, because nobody was about (and no-one really cared), Nawar gave a full blown performance of his bands newest non-hit single. Even lying face down Zayn could hear the talent in the long drawls of that raspy voice, with the exact influence from Oasis any northern teenager growing up in the nineties would have.

But he could also hear the numerous failures, the tiredness creeping up. Singing a few good tunes wasn’t going to get Nawar famous, or at least midly recognized.

There frankly was no recipe to it. You just had to be luck enough. Or learn to live with mediocrity.

“Shut it, man.”

“What? What? Just ‘cos you modeled panties?”

“Yeah, fuck off.”

They lay in a comfortable silence, easy companionship paired with the distant memories of games of football during family gatherings ages and ages ago. Nawar was already thirty. Zayn was soon going to be.

He never prepared himself for aging, never mention the graceful part. For Liam it somehow did not matter how old he was, he was comfortable in his unfashionable sweaters, as he was comfortable living with his glamorous, busy wife. He would one day blink in the mirror, see the lines on his forehead and the gray streaks in his hair – and smile.

Harry would age and remain the same. He had that sort of talent – where people anywhere, and now perhaps in Ukraine, would look at him and love him for not giving two shits and his ever remaining dimples.

Zayn would simply shrink and pale.

Until he was mostly gone, anyways.

He showed Nawar some of the sketches he’d done while the afternoon of the first day of the year dragged on. They were mostly objects, lying around the house, messily scrawled with different colored pencils. Because as much as his mum and his aunties cleaned, his childhood home was going to remain untidy in its own way. And like the rain-drenched, dull-colored scenery outside, it had its own charm.

The day closed up uneventfully with (unholy amounts of) heated left-overs from the previous meal and the quiet squawking of the TV.

At 8:47 in the evening, Zayn was scrubbing the dishes with another cousin. His mum was wiping down the table while humming under her breath, eyes crinkled with satisfaction. Nawar was in the hallway putting his shoes on, one arm stuck in his parka. Zayn’s sisters were sat in different corners of the house, texting on their smart phones. Tariq was on the toilet, reading a lads mag.

When the doorbell rang.

Conveniently on his way out, Nawar yanked open the front door. To be honest, Zayn didn’t remember much of what happened afterwards. Only that there were voices and people asking where he was, people stomping down stairs, delighted shrieks of laughter.

And then he was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, hands still soaked in foam, wearing outdated clothing from his teenage years. And Liam was sitting on his couch, behind him the big family portrait, the brownish wallpaper with faint traces of purple paint splatter, yellowing at the edges.

His mum fussed and started unpacking and reheating the food again. Liam apologized profusely, numerous times, everything was in a flurry, chairs were pulled, the TV was turned off and then on again, and Zayn just.

Stood there, immobilized.

It wasn’t until they were back in the calmness of his bedroom, with Nawar gone, a makeshift bed for Zayn spread out on the floor, that he started noticing the blueish shadows beneath Liam’s eyes. The rumpled sleeves of his shirt. The stubble along his tight jawline.

“Uh.” He also noticed that it was the first time they had talked directly to each other since Liam stepped foot into his childhood home one and a half hours ago. They talked through all of Zayn’s relatives, the oh yes’s, the so nice to have you here’s, the explanations that they were mates in London. Yeah, yeah.

“So, you want to, like, sleep or something?” Zayn gestured towards his creaky bed, freshly made with white guests duvets. He felt the heavy coldness in his limbs, the anxiety, the dread in the deep pit of his stomach. Because as amazing it was to see Liam again (something he thought would never, never happen again. He would not let it, anyways), he couldn’t ignore the circumstances under which they had parted.

The smudged canvasses, the tears, the snow.

“Listen.” Liam’s voice broke a little, and he quickly cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t… mean to. Just barge in like that.”

“That’s alright, man.” Zayn hear himself say, heart leaping to his throat. He felt pathetic, the way his lungs contracted, his pulse flattered. “It’s fine, yeah?”

“I just, Harry gave me your address. I felt like I had to come. I felt like… I don’t know what I feel like, to be honest.” Liam opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

He looked so, so tired.

“You want to, like. Go to sleep?” Zayn repeated himself, hands clawed tight in the Mickey Mouse sheets he himself was going to sleep on. He didn’t know whether to reach out, to pull back, to leave the room for the night and live out his sleeplessness that was bound to come on the sofa. “You look… tired, man.”

Liam didn’t react.

All the false cheerfulness he had put on for Zayn’s family had fallen off, the lines around his mouth deepening with a carved-in frown. He looked nothing like the smiling man Zayn had come to know, drawn over and over and over again, thought about day and night.

It was in that moment that he realized that that Liam had lived in his head, and the one that was sitting in front of him carried so much more history, untold sorrows and lines upon lines of years edged out on his features. He had treated Liam like a magical source of redemption from his past life, someone that was going to pull him out of misery, make him truly happy, give him the steadiness of genuine love.

The Liam sitting in front of him couldn’t give him any of those things at the moment. Scarily enough, Zayn didn’t find himself wanting him any less for it.

It went in slow motion. Or maybe it didn’t.

Zayn really couldn’t tell, he didn’t give a fuck either.

One second they were both sitting, shoulders tense, eyes trained on random spots in the room. The next they were launched across it, colliding in a painful, jumbled mess. Liam banged his head against a chair leg while Zayn struggled to get on top of him, a hollow pain in the back of his neck where he had twisted it wrong.

The dim, yellow light didn’t mask Liam’s stunned expression. For just a second, Zayn halted, twisting his shaking hands in Liam’s plaid shirt, and looked at him, stared straight at him, eyes wide and unblinking. A voice inside his head whispered a croaking this is madness.

And it was.

But it didn’t stop either of them from shedding their trousers, didn’t stop Zayn from crawling all the way down, nosing along, humming to himself unintentionally with the strain in his jaw. Liam banged his head several times again before rolling himself up at tugging away Zayn’s underwear.

They used a mixture of lotion and saliva, and didn’t bother with anything else. It was gritty and harsh and desperate – and Zayn never wanted it to end. A CD case dug into his back harshly while Liam clutched his hips, dragging him upwards and thrust in with a rough, uncontrolled push.

It was sore and oversensitive, Liam’s arm shook from the effort of holding himself up, and the carpet scratched them both. It was awful, they both knew better, but neither of them could stop.

Between the frantic thrusts and the chair falling over, their eyes connected, and perhaps it was just Zayn delusional mind, but there was a mutual recognition in that very moment. Or to the very least, they looked at each other.

Liam came biting down on Zayn’s collarbone.

The purple imprint sat burning on his skin while Liam’s hand closed around his shaft to bring him off. It was like a punch in his gut, something tugging the air from his very being. He couldn’t catch his breath for what felt like an eternity.

“You alright, Zayn?” Liam’s eyes were so brown and sincere. The lack of oxygen blurred Zayn’s sight, or maybe it was the fatigue after the constant tension taking over. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be fucking sorry.” Their stomachs were tacky with come and sweat, the air smelled salty, heavy with their actions. “Fuck you.”

“Yeah. Fuck me.” Liam gave a snorted laugh, letting his head fall back unto the carpet. “I’m sorry. But I really bloody am.”

“Don’t be, man.” Zayn turned his head, taking in the unshaven stubble on Liam’s cheek, the crinkles around his eyes, the paleness of his arms.

In his head, he started composing a new painting.


	23. In which Liam stays awake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter that I pre-wrote. The last two are still waiting somewhere in the creative universe.

Liam woke up with a violent jolt.

 

For a few long moments his heartbeat wouldn’t calm down, his eyes unable to focus on anything but the long shadows that the sinking sun casted against the dusty orange glow of the ceiling. His neck cricked uncomfortably – he had fallen asleep askew, propped up on pillows and awkwardly shaped cushions, maybe a few stuffed animals. 

 

After a while, the ticking of the old Spiderman clock on the far wall became audible again, and his breathing calmed.

 

He had slept through the day for the third time in a row.

 

As a child, and throughout his teenage years, he had been an uncharacteristically organized sleeper. At around ten his eyes would begin to droop, his concentration gone. Liam studied best in the morning. During his university years he tried to keep up with social events, staying out until late, watching the sunrise after a night of frantic body movements and spilled beer. Once he dropped out to start his apprenticeship, he fell right back into his rhythm of early mornings and ten o’clock bed times.

 

Now he felt like a bat, too scared to face the blinding light of day, sitting up for hours at night, feeling restless, fingers working away on yet another scarf. He spent nights researching the patterns and techniques for hats and mittens on Zyan’s old, chunky desktop computer, which still ran on Windows 2000.

 

Zayn didn’t comment on any of it, despite it being his house, his room and his bed. He went to work at six, with Liam passing out once he was out the door, and came back oil-stained and tired with dusk creeping behind his back. Zayn’s mum gave constant advice, recommending doctors and pills and cooking chicken stew, but she never entered, never told Liam to get up, get out, get a life. Never questioned why her son’s middle aged friend was suddenly a permanent (and immovable) guest in her household.

When Liam wasn’t too dazed to function, he sat with her, watching game shows and Bollywood movies, showing her his latest knitting.

 

Something squeaked when he tried turning to his side, and he tugged out a worn plush ninja turtle, tossing it to the side. Danielle had called just yesterday, voice tight with worry and anger, perhaps frustration. Liam didn’t bother giving her his whereabouts, just confirmed that he was safe, staying with a friend. It took him no time to break out into tears after they hung up. It was ugly, earnest crying, with wrecking sobs and hiccups. Liam was glad that no-one was in the room to witness it.

 

After he had wiped his tears and picked up one of Zayn’s old comic books, he realized that even if there was a chance of them being together, ever again, he didn’t want it. All in all, their marriage had been fine, maybe even a happy one. But he realized that he did not begin his wild affair with another man completely randomly. Sure, he had been utterly infatuated with Zayn, still was. But there was something fundamentally lacking in his relationship with Danielle, something that didn’t show on the surface on happy domesticity they maintained.

He couldn’t pinpoint it, but the thought alone wrecked him with a pain that left him choking for breath.

 

Then there were the nightmares – the ones that occurred during the day.

He dreamt of tiny little eyes and ears, of soft, downy hair the colour of his own. Of a little heartbeat that stilled quickly and sent him into a disoriented scramble. In his dreams, his child, still a fetus, hung suspended in the air, smiling a broad happy grin. He then dreamed of Danielle, eyes wide with fear, crawling backwards, clawing the wall, repeating words in Zayn’s voice, telling him to not be fucking sorry, fuck you, okay. Don’t be fucking sorry.

 

When Liam woke up for the second time, it was pitch-black.

 

He soaked up the darkness, closing and opening his eyes, sensing no difference. Beside him, he could hear the quiet, steady breathing, the familiar smell of cigarettes, a whiff of Kebab meat. Was this the same day? A different one? Had he slept through the week? The year? Would there ever be daylight again, for him?

 

“Hey.”

 

Zayn stirred. He managed to wedge his arm between them in the narrow space, placing his palm flat against Liam’s beating heart. “You alright?”

 

“No.” Liam heard himself say. “Not really.”

 

Zayn was heart-shatteringly gorgeous, even in the darkness. Liam reached out, traced his finger-tips along his jaw line, his temples, the space beneath his eyebrows. He had been so overwhelmed at first, by how Zayn looked, how his thighs spread and lips puckered. Then he had been mesmerized by how easy it was to get along with him, to just sit, elbows touching, without saying a word, without having the air between them go cold.

Now he felt, dulled beneath the shapes and shadows of his dreams, a searing hot wave of affection, something that settled in the pit of his stomach in waves. Even when he couldn’t see him at all, Zayn confirmed his utter beauty by a simple touch.

 

“Hmmm.” They were quiet for a while.

 

“You want t’go out?” there was slight fumbling, then the snap of the lamp on the bedside table. In the yellowish light, Zayn had bruises of fatigue under his eyes, as well. Liam surreptitiously forgot that his mere presence here must be such a burden on Zayn. The guilt sat in his throat, ready to be choked on.

“I can go, if you want.”

“No, I meant go out. Get out of the house, just us.”

 

They dressed in silence, stumbling occasionally. The house was still while they creaked down the staircase, the soft voice of a television presenter behind Zayn’s parents’ bedroom door.

The air outside was freezing cold, shocking Liam into a slight crouch. He hadn’t been outside for a couple days now.

 

They walked for what seemed like an eternity before reaching the next bus stop, where they waited for a solid hour for a night bus to come. Beside them, a man with a bottle snored into the collar of his dirty jacket.

 

“I want to show you something, yeah?”

They crouched in the last row of the bus, plastic bags and crisp packets at their feet, the seats tacky with spilled drinks. Liam only nodded. Outside, streetlamps flicked by, yellow, lit squares of faraway windows blurred to a line. The bus driver coughed a few times, phlegm stuck in his throat.

 

They got off at a stop in a neighborhood that looked absolutely nondescript. Liam followed Zayn, taking in the graffiti, the run-down shops off license that were still opened, men sharing fags with their backs to the fluorescent light. Zayn had a steady pace, his gait sure, like he knew the place well. Maybe he did – maybe he used to come here all the time, with his childhood mates. Kick around a ball, laugh about the insignificance of their thoughts.

 

They stopped at a park bench between two streetlights.

 

“I used to be addicted to things. Still am, you know.” Zayn pulled out a cigarette, holding it between his lips while the brief flicker of his lighter illuminated the top of his nose. He snorted half a laugh, before inhaling and then letting out a long, smoky breath.

 

“Like, sex.” Zayn hopped up on the bench and sat down on his backrest. Liam followed his lead, face still turned towards him. “And maybe weed. I dunno. Definitely smokes.”

Liam kept his fingers interwoven between his knees, shudders going down his back every few minutes. It was so, so cold. “Yeah.” He said, he himself had been addicted to adrenaline, to running until his legs gave out. He had been addicted to the peaceful image of Danielle asleep on her side of their bed.

 

Zayn lit his second cigarette, knee jerking nervously. After a while, a man came closer, face dark underneath his hood. He looked suspiciously casual, and for a while Liam felt himself tense up – but then Zayn nodded, small but barely there, and with a smooth movement handed over something small, folded but thick. In return a little bag was placed on the palm of his hand. Liam only caught a brief flash of it.

 

“What –“

“Come on.”

“Zayn, what the actual fuck –“

“Come on, now.”

 

They went back to the bus station, where a group of teenagers were smoking up, talking among themselves, the bare-legged girls huddled against each other against the cold. They took the exact same route back, walked in complete silence until they were back in front of Zayn’s childhood home.

 

Instead of going towards the front door, however, Zayn started walking around the house. He stopped by something that seemed to be a shed, and after a few minutes Liam heard him breath another “come on, man.”

It was a ladder, placed against the shed wall, extending all the way to its roof. Liam almost lost his footing in the complete darkness. After reaching the shed roof, Zayn arranged a few things, and then hoisted the ladder up for a further climb to the rooftop of their two-story house.

 

Up there the wind blew like a million razor blades coming down. Liam was shivering violently, his pulse racing, that flash of a tiny bag still imprinted to the back of his eye lids.

“Here, sit down.” Zayn was already perching, lighting another smoke with difficulty. Liam carefully slid down to join him. In the changed position, with his clammy hands securely wrapped around the metal pipes lining the roof, he could suddenly see the faraway lights of the city, dotted in white and yellow and red, moving, not moving. They blurred before his eyes.

 

“I did coke because I wanted to, me.” Zayn’s voice was very close to his ear, his hot, smoky breath lost in the blowing wind. “Because it made me feel good.” He took out the tiny bag and weighed it in his hands. “I was really desperate to feel good, you know.”

 

Liam stared at the bag, snow white even in the darkness.

 

“Sometimes I felt good, sometimes I didn’t. A line could do wonders before a show.” His lips grazed Liam’s cheek, a soft touch, warm and dry between all the cold surrounding them. “But I think, yeah, that it hollowed me out. I never stopped meself, they had to make me. Sometimes Perrie would lock me up. I never stopped.”

 

His nails dug into the plastic and suddenly a powdery white line started leaking out, tugged away by the wind. Zayn ripped open the package, and within a few seconds, like a ghost, spirited away, the contents were all gone. He dropped the packet, and his hands found Liam’s.

 

And like he did these days, Liam felt the tears roll down his cheek.

 

Only that before, he had been heartbroken with the world. Now he was heartbroken for Zayn, and maybe glad for him. Most of all, he knew he was in love, completely out of his control, misplaced and at the wrong time.

 

The faraway lights of Bradford flickered shut when he closed his eyes and leaned heavily against Zayn, a gust of cigarette smoke catching him in the face. In his head, the baby was crawling up the roof, towards him, smiling grotesquely.

 

“You stopped.” He whispered before the wind took his voice and his lips were sealed.


	24. Trains

It started like this: Zayn was born on a grey, droopy January morning. He grew up. He found, he lost. Then he turned thirty.

 

The day started out like any other for the last two weeks, with Liam falling asleep at dawn and Zayn blinking his eyes open to the bleak sunlight. It was weird rhythm they shared, constantly absent from one another, in body, in mind – yet there was a common understanding. That this was something both of them needed.

He ate breakfast with his mum, who was already up and about, stirring in pots and making the microwave beep. She spoke about a family gathering on the weekend, about celebration and relatives traveling from Leeds and as far as Scotland.

 

Then, unexpected like he tended to be, Harry popped him a text asking to Skype. Zayn ignored it for a couple hours, busying himself with Kebab-type activities, listening to the idle chatter of old men who came in way before lunch time. His cousin Tariq chopped away at the newly delivered lettuce while telling him all about his long-time maybe-girlfriend’s plan on moving to Bradford.

 

“You should ask her, you know.” Zayn told him after two hours of the same banter reheated and served along with cheesy chips and grilled slabs of meat.

That had Tariq silent for a while, before he turned to Zayn in a rare moment of peace during the constant stream of customers and said: “You know what? I reckon I will, me.”

 

And that was that.

 

He borrowed Doniya’s laptop after his early shift ended and sat down at the family dining table, listening to the familiar Skype tune playing out until Harry’s craggy, muted image appeared on his sister’s screen. It took quite some time and a few more call-attempts until the audio was settled on the other side. Mrs. Pavelyuchenko, another woman her age but thrice her size, and a small boy perched on the large lady’s knee greeted him, the child gazing calmly at himself on the screen.

 

“Zyén Selimovich. I not see you for many long months, my boy.” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko looked aged, but weirdly content. She had a bright red scarf wrapped around her head, and even through the computer screen, Zayn could see the startling blue of her eyes.

“Mrs. Pavelyuchenko. You look well!” Zayn put a smile on his face, and after a while he noticed that the corners of his mouth turned upwards on their own accord. Maybe he was glad to see her, see Harry lurking in the background, after all.

 

Harry turned to mumble something. Standing up, he was a good two heads taller than the two women. With a start, Zayn realized that he was speaking to them in Ukrainian, like it had been his mother tongue from the very start. Like he had left a long time ago.

 

Maybe he had.

 

Zayn was typically too self-absorbed to notice the gist of things. Only the parts that pained him, the breathlessness of Harry’s morning blow jobs. That was his way of loving his hippie best friend from University – always reminiscing, always on edges and lines. Like he was trying to keep everything in the past while clutching on helplessly.

 

“Mrs. Pavelyuchenko!”

 

The quick warm pressure on his shoulder told Zayn that Liam had come downstairs. He was dressed in one of Zayn’s old long-sleeves, turquoise, sleek and painfully 90s. He still looked good.

“Mr. Liam! You come visit Zyén!” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko clapped her hands in glee. “Sit, sit! I must introduce Ludmilla and Stanislav to the both of you. Tak, tak – my cousin, Ludmilla Sergeyivina Perevernykruchenko and her grandson, Stanislav Nikolayevich – tak, oh, Harry! Why this program interrupt me?”

Harry’s head popped up, his eyes bemused: “Ni problema, lyubyy. It’s just the Anti-Virus.”

 

Zayn looked to his left, where Liam had pulled himself a chair, smiling broadly at the spectacle unfolding on Doniya’s computer screen. He looked well. Much better than the breathless, sleepless man Zayn constantly housed in his bed. The one who fell into nightmares while wide awake, who preferred the dark. Zayn had pulled him back, sitting on the roof that windy night. Or at least he had attempted to.

 

“The point is, lyubyy, that Zayn has turned thirty today. Trydtsyat sohodni, Ludmilla! Yes, today.” Harry adjusted the webcam, dimples dark on his cheeks with the colour contrast. All three of them, including young Stanislav, broke out into cheers once they fully got the meaning Harry was trying to convey. Liam laughed, Zayn thanked everyone and extensive congratulations in long, incomprehensible Ukrainian were made. It was such a tumult that Zayn’s mum poked her head through the kitchen door.

 

“No! Mrs. Pavel! Zayn told us about you!” She exclaimed once Liam managed to tell her who the people on the other side were. More introductions were made, Harry scrambling to translate and keeping up quite well, while Zayn’s mum went on and on about how grateful she was that someone down south had looked after her boy. They got along like a house on fire.

 

Zayn and Liam retreated from the precious screen space when a few other relatives poked their heads in to join with the greeting, all more than happy to explain their long family names, accepting the mutuality with pride and fascination. More cultural exchange in one day was barely possible. When uncle Kamran started explaining tribal titles, Zayn tugged at Liam’s shiny 90’s sleeve and they escaped upstairs together. 

 

It was weird, how normal it had become for Zayn to reach out and touch, find, hold. He was now used to seeing Liam’s profile, eyes droopy, large frame spread out across his childhood bed while getting up. While coming home. While randomly turning to catch a look of the sky.

Throughout Liam’s impromptu week-long visit to Bradford, he had thought of offering the guest room exactly four times. Each and every time he couldn’t bear speaking the words – because he wanted the closeness. He wanted the discomfort of narrow space. He wanted Liam so much that he sometimes felt like locking the door, hiding the key and pressing his lips so close to his heart that he could count the intervals between the soft, steady thumps.

 

He wanted him a little like he used to crave cocaine. With the vital difference that he now intellectually realized just that. 

 

“Zayn.”

 

Zayn looked up from where he had habitually settled in his old, creaky desk chair. Liam was still standing by the door, and his childhood bedroom was at its tidiest since the day he moved out in 2002. His mum had swept in that day, piling things he could neither take nor leave into a bin bag, muttering under her breath, eyes still red from when they had said their official goodbyes.

 

Perrie never laid eyes on his old room. She and his parents met at the Park Lane Hilton Restaurant. Now Liam had laid his hands all over it, dusted every crevice, read Zayn’s comics at least twice, the Iron Man ones probably thrice over.

 

“Happy Birthday.” Liam’s voice broke a little at the end of his two-word sentence.

“You cleaned my room…” Zayn paused for a second. “As a present.”

“Yeah and. Yeah, I guess I did that. Yeah.” Liam cleared his throat. “But, listen. I’m also. I also booked an evening ticket. To London.”

 

Downstairs, Zayn could hear his mum break out into raucous laughter while the tinny Ukrainian voices echoed her. A fraction of his brain was processing. The rest fell into old habit and shriveled on command.

Then, suddenly, violently, he realized that his whole life had narrowed down to this very moment, with his bedroom tidy and his heart transparent, beating against the hollow of his throat, bared.

 

A moment of silence occurred, with Liam visibly grasping for words while Zayn drank in the sight of him like a drowning man who had decided to embrace the waves crushing in.

“I don’t want you to leave. Like, in a metaphorical way.”

Liam’s head jerked up, his mouth opened and closed. “Yeah. No. That’s what I sort of wanted to talk about, you know.”

“I don’t – I’ve naught down there, yeah? Like, not even a room or summat.” But he had Liam. He had the promise of him, of something to build, to mold. And in a moment that felt strangely electrifying, Zayn could see Liam read his implication, word by word by word.

“Listen, Zayn. I need to clear things. With everyone.” Liam’s eyes started darting around the room, his jaw tight. “But – I, you know. This.”

“Yeah.”

“I just need to – clear. First. All needs to be clear.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And I can’t – I can’t promise when –“

“Yeah, I get it.”

 

Liam made a few steps forward, his broad shoulders hunched with tension. Then he reached out and cradled Zayn’s chin in his hands, softly, like this was the first time for him to do it.

 

Maybe it was.

 

“I just want you to know, Zayn, that – that…” Liam took a deep breath, touching their foreheads together, the tips of their noses bumping softly. His eyes were a clear, warm brown, flecked with gold, and they finished the sentence for Liam. Zayn spared him. Living a full thirty years gave him the rare wisdom of knowing what needed to be said, and what didn’t.

 

Right now, they weren’t ready yet. Not for big confessions, for future visions and plans.

 

Though they were more than ready to fuck goodbye.

 

Surprisingly enough, nothing about it was desperate. They barely made a dent in the new-found tidiness of the room. Liam unbuckled his belt, eyes fixed on Zayn, raking up and down his body, like he was unsure which part he should best remember.

It was a quiet affair, what with half of Zayn’s extended family buzzing around downstairs. It felt far removed, like there were more than a few steps between them and blatant disapproval, scandalized shrieking and all the trains they had yet to catch.

 

“There’s tons I want to tell you.” Liam told him after he’d bit back his last moan, breath still coming rough. “But, after.”

 

After extensive goodbyes downstairs.

 

After their silent bus ride into town.

 

After Liam had plucked his ticket from then vendor, hands shoved deep in the pockets of the trousers he had arrived in. He had left all his knit work behind, gifted the various mittens and scarfs to Zayn’s mum.

 

After was, to Zayn, a fleeting moment down the timeline he had yet to recognize. They sat down at the edge of a crowded bench, with a family of three squeezed together next to them, frowning at the darkening sky, the mother absentmindedly petting the child’s hair. Liam’s shoulder was pressed against his, their thighs occasionally bumping.

 

The train was sixteen minutes late, the people around them milling towards the opening doors, luggage and toddlers in tow. Liam stood up, cleared his throat, and then reached out to shake Zayn’s hand.

 

“Thank you, Zayn. It was… a pleasure.”

 

The formality was strangely intimate, and Zayn found his throat constricting. He nodded from where he was sat, arm stretched, eyes locked, a gentle flush creeping up his neck.

 

Then Liam let go and stepped ahead. He turned back, waving, before boarding the train, hands empty at his sides.

 

And leaned back against the cold metal of his now empty seat, eyes crinkling up as he watched the doors close with a warning sound, the fluorescent lights flickering to life above him. Liam leaned against the nearest window, looking out, maybe looking at Zayn, maybe not.

 

And the train went, wagon after wagon, tugged in one after another, gaining speed, rattling, taking, leaving.

 

And that was how it started.


	25. Epilogue (“We’ll take the sun in the morning”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. Vavavoom, I hope you enjoyed it.

Mrs. Pavelyuchenko had once told Harry that Ukraine was bathed in the colours of its flag. Blue as radiant as the wide canvas of the sky spanning over them, gold as soft as the wind rippling through the fields of corn. 

Of course, they lived in Donetsk, nowhere near the muddied, rusting beauty of the countryside, surrounded by blocks of greying buildings and honking soviet era cars speeding along with their western counterparts. Harry liked to think that he saw the colours anyway. 

“Tak, Harry, you see things, tak.” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko would tell him, standing in the kitchen, her cousin’s grandson Stanislav clutched at her hip, stirring in some pot or another. Then she would ask him how his language course was today, and if he had made friends with some more lovely Russian businessmen. 

Harry had. 

In fact, the language course he took was so chock full with thriving, ambitious Eastern European youngsters that he, as the perpetual non-threat he was perceived to be, made friends (and casual sex acquaintances) easier than anyone.

The English accent also helped. 

“Ay, you see new on television? Is horrible. Horrible.” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko fumbled with the remote control until their brand new flat screen sprang to live. As it had been for the last couple of weeks, the demonstrations in Kiev flickered on and off the screen. “They violent. Very violent. I am only happy Mikhail is in UK, no?”  
Harry nodded along before settling down on the sofa next to cousin Ludmilla who was sipping on a cup of root juice, shaking her head. “You see that, boy? That’s our Maidan. I lived near there, once.” She told him in Ukrainian. By now, he didn’t even need to think twice before his brain processed the tangles of sounds. “Maybe you’ll see for yourself one day. It is very beautiful in Kiev.”   
“Just not now!” Mrs. Pavelyuchenko piped in quickly, eyes flicking to the television nervously. “Just not now, Harry, holubchik, my dove.” 

She went back to stirring and Harry got up and went to the little chamber he was now sharing with Stanislav. The one window almost took up all of the wall, toys and children’s books littered the small strip of carpet that was still visible between their two beds and the cupboard holding all of Harry’s belongings. It should’ve been small, claustrophobic, but the room was brightly lit, and the soft, woven curtains turned the bleak daylight outside into something warm and golden.   
Stanislav was a clever child. He was learning English almost as fast as Harry was learning Ukrainian, and even in his mother-tongue, his soft child’s-speak was easier to understand than most of the mumbles and grumbles the adults spoke in. 

He lay down on his bed and gazed at the shadows dancing light and shadows on the ceiling. It had arrived two and a half weeks ago. The thick envelope was stuffed in the narrow space between his mattress and the headboard, peeking up in a strip of brown colour.

Harry sighed, and counted until six. 

Zayn used to ask him why he always worked with these random numbers. Why six? Why seven and two-quarters? Why not ten or twenty? Harry had never deigned to answer him – but now it occurred to him that Zayn was looking for predictability. Something boring and repetitive to hold on to. 

With a rush, he stretched and let his fingertips skim over the tops of the envelope. Then he pulled it out, still lying down, and ripped it open. 

Pictures fluttered out, old-fashioned, with poor lighting and fuzzy focus. Harry picked them off his chest, one by one. He faintly recognized Mr. and Mrs. Pavelyuchenko’s old apartment, but it had changed. A lot of the old furniture had gone, replaced by nothing at all. 

Zayn had photographed one big mattress lying on the floor of what used be the main bedroom. On the edge, Harry could make out paintings, one after another, lining the walls.   
There were random ones, where it was just a look at the perpetual rain outside, or eggs frying in a pan. Harry skimped through them, his heart heavy against his ribs. Then he stopped short at a near-shot of a painting leaning against the balcony. It was half-finished, the brush-strokes still raw. But Harry thought he recognized a glint of green, the brown of his own matted curls, mixed in with coppery colours and dots of white. 

He put that one aside. 

His old room in the Pavelyuchenko apartment had been transformed into something neat and tidy, something Harry knew wasn’t at all Zayn’s doing. It looked freshly furnished, with a few furniture pieces that were clearly designer-made, and a few that came straight out of Ikea. 

“Harry, holubchik, come eat dinner, will you?” 

“A second, Ludmilla!” 

He quickly went through the rest of the pictures, something inside him aching, mending, ripping open again. It had been more than half a year now, and still this was what he felt like. 

“Harry, you’re ‘sposed to come to dinner, mate.” Stanislav stuck his head through the door, already chewing on something. “We’re havin’ pancakes.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Just, one second.” 

A picture caught his eye. A rare one, with the sun casting a glow into the corridor, a strip of blue sky visible at a corner. Zayn had been meaning to photograph the unquestionably beautiful light-play, but what struck Harry was Liam, or rather his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked sleep-mussed, content, like he had woken to the very brightness of the room, to touching hands. To Zayn. 

Harry dropped the photograph and went to join his new family at the rickety dining table that was, once again, laden to its limits. They spoke in a mixture of English and Ukrainian while stuffing their mouths, Harry and Stanislav taking turns translating for Ludmilla. 

“Oh, but Harry, promise me you will not go to Kiev. I know you, just look at you!”  
Harry smiled into his root beer. “I’m not going anywhere, love.”   
But they both knew that wasn’t true. Harry was going to leave for Kiev as soon as he managed to get himself to order the train tickets. 

Political upheaval. Who knew that it thrilled him so much. 

That night he sat down with Stanislav to read him The giving tree, like he had so many nights before. They sat, curled up in self-knit and crocheted blankets, and discussed the drawing and the meanings. Harry showed him a few of the pictures Zayn sent. Interestingly enough Stanislav quite liked the few nondescript ones of English skies and eggs frying. Harry let him keep them. 

Mrs. Pavelyuchenko came in for a goodnight kiss, reaching to turn off the lights. Like Harry wasn’t thirty years old, like Stanislav couldn’t reach the switcher himself. 

Harry motioned for her to wait a moment, then he flipped through the remaining pictures, before settling eyes on the one that had been circling at the back of his brain, over and over again. 

“Go to sleep, Harry. You will be up early tomorrow.”

“Yes, Mrs. Pavelyuchenko. Goodnight.” 

He cast a last look at Liam on the photograph, and then, in a moment of a heartbeat, found that there was a beauty in the way his jaw was set and raised, the way his hand carried the razor, the squint of his eye. 

A certain defiance. 

Then the lights flickered off.

 

We'll chase the stars in the nighttime  
And we'll take the sun in the morning  
We just don't care if they see us fall

 

\- The Wildfire (If it was true) by Mando Diao


End file.
